tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9085796Sun, 08 Feb 2015 19:16:18 +0000THE AIR FORCE PUNDIT"Never give in, never give in, never, never- in nothing, great or small, large or petty- never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy." WINSTON CHURCHILLhttp://airforcepundit.blogspot.com/noreply@blogger.com (Captain Jarred Fishman, USAFR)Blogger1345125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9085796.post-5517494963577687409Sat, 27 Nov 2010 02:19:00 +00002010-11-26T21:19:55.152-05:00Iraqi PM Al Maliki vows to form inclusive governmentFriday, November 26, 2010 10:21 GMT
As Iraq’s government formation is on track, the different political parties stressed the necessity to have an inclusive government that engages all parties.
After officially appointing Prime Minister Nuri Al Maliki to form the new government, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani affirmed that the new government will be a partnership government that represents all parties in the country.
President Talabani cautioned however of the present time sensitivity in Iraq.
Prime Minister Nuri Al Maliki vowed to form an inclusive government that would be charged of ascertaining security in the country and providing services to the people.
Al Maliki called on political parties to name upright candidates.http://airforcepundit.blogspot.com/2010/11/iraqi-pm-al-maliki-vows-to-form.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Captain Jarred Fishman, USAFR)322tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9085796.post-5716448808751955559Thu, 25 Nov 2010 18:42:00 +00002010-11-25T13:42:35.647-05:00UK-based Taliban spend months fighting Nato forces in AfghanistanTaliban fighter reveals he lives for most of year in London and heads to Afghanistan for combat
British-based men of Afghan origin are spending months at a time in Afghanistan fighting Nato forces before returning to the UK, the Guardian has learned. They also send money to the Taliban.
A Taliban fighter in Dhani-Ghorri in northern Afghanistan last month told the Guardian he lived most of the time in east London, but came to Afghanistan for three months of the year for combat.
"I work as a minicab driver," said the man, who has the rank of a mid-level Taliban commander. "I make good money there [in the UK], you know. But these people are my friends and my family and it's my duty to come to fight the jihad with them."
"There are many people like me in London," he added. "We collect money for the jihad all year and come and fight if we can."
His older brother, a senior cleric or mawlawi who also fought in Dhani-Ghorri, lives in London as well.
Intelligence officials have long suspected that British Muslims travel to Afghanistan and Pakistan each year to train with extremist groups.
Last year it was reported that RAF spy planes operating in Helmand in southern Afghanistan had detected strong Yorkshire and Birmingham accents on fighters using radios and telephones. They apparently spoke the main Afghan languages of Dari and Pashtu, but lapsed into English when they were lost for the right words. The threat was deemed sufficiently serious that spy planes have patrolled British skies in the hope of picking up the same voice signatures of the fighters after their return to the UK.
The dead body of an insurgent who had an Aston Villa tattoo has also been discovered in southern Afghanistan.
British military officials say there have been no recent reports of British Taliban in Helmand in southern Afghanistan and that the overwhelming majority of foreign fighters are Pakistanis. Not since John Walker Lindh, the so-called American Taliban, was captured in late 2001, has the US admitted to having successfully captured an insurgent from a western country.
In the main US-run prison near Bagram airfield, there are just 50 "third country nationals" being held, a spokeswoman said.
"Most of these are Pakistani, with small numbers from other countries in the region," she said.
According to a senior officer at the National Directorate of Security, Afghanistan's equivalent of MI5, foreign fighters tend to be Arabs, Chechens, Pakistanis or from central Asia's former Soviet republics such as Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.http://airforcepundit.blogspot.com/2010/11/uk-based-taliban-spend-months-fighting.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Captain Jarred Fishman, USAFR)3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9085796.post-3670193076000087174Wed, 24 Nov 2010 15:33:00 +00002010-11-24T10:37:15.105-05:00Colonel Allan West heads to WashingtonAllen West, one of two black Republicans just elected to House, goes against grain
By Krissah Thompson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 24, 2010; 12:42 AM
Allen West, a 22-year Army veteran, is preparing for Washington a bit like he would for a battlefield. His "high and tight" hairstyle will be one of the only buzz cuts in Congress. He plans to carry a camouflage bag, not a briefcase.
And on a recent morning, while others in the Republican Party's large incoming freshman class jockeyed for office space, he declared himself largely indifferent.
"I've lived in tents," said West, who in January will become the first black Republican to represent Florida since 1876.
Since its last black lawmaker retired from the House in 2003, the GOP has been eager to elect high-profile African Americans. The party's desire to demonstrate inclusiveness has been especially pressing since the election of Barack Obama and the rise of the predominantly white tea party movement.
West is one of two black Republicans elected to the House this year. The other, Tim Scott, a longtime politician in South Carolina, was quickly drafted into the GOP leadership as a representative of the freshman class.
West brings to the party a strong personality and, with repeat appearances on Fox News and a spot this past Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press," a profile that many incoming members of Congress would covet. But he's also an unpredictable force, inclined to be an outsider - even within the GOP.
In an interview, he said he doesn't admire anyone in Washington.
On the campaign trail, West found support among anti-establishment groups, including the tea party and motorcycle clubs. He briefly hired as his chief of staff Joyce Kaufman, a local conservative talk radio commentator. She resigned amid controversy over inflammatory comments she made, including disparaging illegal immigrants and referring to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) as "garbage."
West responded by saying he is "even more focused that this liberal, progressive, socialist agenda, this left-wing, vile, vicious, despicable machine that's out there is soundly brought to its knees."
'Truth in boldness'
West, 49, sees himself stepping to the front lines of an ideological war in which he is fighting liberals who want "a country that creates victims where we enslave the American spirit," he said.
Cris Kurtz, the leader of USA Patriots, a tea-party-affiliated group in Tulsa, likened West's influence in the movement to that of Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), who has sometimes bucked his party's leadership. Kurtz described West as "awesome" after hearing him speak at a Kansas rally to support U.S. troops imprisoned for killing Iraqis in violation of U.S. policy.
"He speaks truth in boldness,"Kurtz said.
West was charged by military authorities and forced to retire after firing a handgun near the head of an Iraqi police officer during an interrogation in 2003. The officer was suspected of having information about attacks on U.S. forces in the area. West admitted wrongdoing and paid a fine. His case became a cause celebre for conservative media personalities, and 95 members of Congress signed a letter to the Army secretary in support of him.
"I've been there," West said in a video recorded after the Kansas rally. "We've got to get away from political correctness on the battlefield. Stop believing we can treat the enemy in such a kind and benevolent way."
Timothy Johnson, a leader of the Frederick Douglass Foundation, which brings together black Republicans, said West is independent thinker.
"You don't become a black Republican or get into going against the grain without being real strong about who you think you are and what you believe," said Johnson, an associate of West's and a vice chairman of the North Carolina Republican Party. "Despite the perceptions, the black community is not monolithic looking, thinking or voting. Allen is working on making sure people know that."
'Fight for America'
West ran for the same House seat two years ago. He received little attention from the Republican establishment and had trouble raising money.
This year, national Republicans invested heavily in promoting a diverse slate of candidates for House races. Michael S. Steele, chairman of the Republican National Committee, has noted in speeches that the party recruited 32 African Americans for public office, more than ever. Most lost in primaries.
West was named one of the National Republican Congressional Committee's Young Guns, a designation given to newcomers whom the committee considers viable. His campaign raised $5.3 million, and he was among a handful of conservative military veterans who were endorsed by former Alaska governor Sarah Palin.
West won comfortably in a district that is 83 percent white. Race played little role in his campaign against Democratic Rep. Ron Klein, who worked to convince voters in the South Florida district - including Broward and Palm Beach counties - that West was too extreme.
Voters in the district lean Republican and have traditionally been represented by moderates, said Kevin Wagner, a political science professor at Florida Atlantic University.
"This was one of the few years where a candidate who has said some of the things that West said could have been successful in this district," Wagner said.
Even before Palin's endorsement, West became a tea party phenomenon because of an impromptu speech he gave at a 2009 Tea Party Express rally in Fort Lauderdale. A video of the speech, in which he invokes the Revolutionary War, has been viewed more than 2.3 million times on YouTube. It is vintage West.
The crowd of a few hundred had been bored by a series of dry speeches, West recalled, and the organizer asked him to say a few words. With three minutes to compose his thoughts, West took the microphone and shouted: "You better get your butts out there and understand it's a fight, and you better fight for America.
"You need to leave here understanding one simple word and that word is 'bayonet.' You need to leave here and charge this enemy for your freedom."
A 'role model,' 'example'
West was raised in inner-city Atlanta. His father was a World War II veteran who worked at the local veterans hospital. His mother held a job at the Marine barracks.
"No question I was going into the military," he said.
He joined the Army at age 21, straight out of college, where he studied political science and later military strategy.
West's family home was not far from Ebenezer Baptist Church, where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. preached, and he remembers walking along Auburn Avenue with his folks and marveling at the "black entrepreneurial spirit." His parents voted for Rep. John Lewis, an Atlanta Democrat and civil rights hero, but they also taught him conservative values, West said.
"One of the implied responsibilities that I do have as a black member up here is to be a role model and an example," West said.
Scott, the other African American Republican joining Congress, has said he will not join the Congressional Black Caucus because he's not interested in groups that separate people by race. J.C. Watts (Okla.), the last black Republican to serve in Congress, took the same stance.
West told Fox News commentator Juan Williams recently that his late parents would be "absolutely appalled" if he won a seat in Congress but refused to join the black caucus. The group said it would welcome both Republicans, though at least two members of the caucus campaigned against West.
West seems unconcerned about any tension that might arise from his presence in the caucus.
"You want to talk about bipartisanship?" he said. "Well, I'll bring it to the CBC."http://airforcepundit.blogspot.com/2010/11/colonel-allan-west-heads-to-washington.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Captain Jarred Fishman, USAFR)14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9085796.post-7736143357156282773Wed, 24 Nov 2010 03:36:00 +00002010-11-23T22:37:23.256-05:00Korean Clash Forces the U.S. to Weigh OptionsDAVID E. SANGER and MARK McDONALD
WASHINGTON — President Obama’s top national security aides met Tuesday to develop a response to North Korea’s deadly shelling of a South Korean military installation as the United States struggled for the second time this year to keep a North Korean provocation from escalating into war. Mr. Obama, who attended the end of the emergency session after a trip to a Chrysler plant, called South Korea’s president, Lee Myung-bak, to express American solidarity and talk about a coordinated response. That response is likely to start with pressing China, which has sought to maintain its influence with the North during what could be a struggle over leadership succession.
But as a former national security official who dealt frequently with North Korea in the Bush administration, Victor Cha, said just a few hours before the attack began, North Korea is “the land of lousy options.” Mr. Obama is once again forced to choose between equally unpalatable choices: responding with verbal condemnations and a modest tightening of sanctions, which has done little to halt new attacks, and reacting strongly, which could risk a broad war in which South Korea’s vibrant capital, Seoul, would be the first target.
As top American officials gathered in the Situation Room late Tuesday, the South Korean military went into what it termed “crisis status.” President Lee said he would order strikes on a North Korean base if there were indications of new attacks.
North Korea’s artillery shells fell on Yeonpyeong Island, a fishing village whose residents fled by ferry to the mainland city of Inchon — where Gen. Douglas MacArthur landed 60 years ago this fall, three months after the outbreak of the Korean War.
Today, Inchon is the site of South Korea’s main international airport, symbolizing the vulnerability of one of the world’s most vibrant economies to the artillery of one of the world’s most isolated and poorest nations.
A senior American official said that an early American assessment indicated that a total of about 175 artillery shells were fired by the North and by the South in response on Tuesday.
But an American official who had looked at satellite images said there was no visible evidence of preparations for a general war. Historically, the North’s attacks have been lightning raids, after which the North Koreans have backed off to watch the world’s reaction. This one came just hours after the South Koreans had completed a long-planned set of military exercises, suggesting that the North Korean attack was “premeditated,” a senior American official said.
Television reports showed large plumes of black smoke spiraling from the island, as dozens of houses caught fire. The shelling killed two Marines and wounded 18 people. The South put its fighter planes on alert — but, tellingly, did not put them in the air or strike at the North’s artillery bases. President Obama was awakened at 3:55 a.m. by his new national security adviser, Thomas E. Donilon, who told him of the attack.
Just 11 days before, North Korea had invited a Stanford University nuclear scientist to Yongbyon, its primary nuclear site, and showed him what was described as a just completed centrifuge plant that, if it goes fully operational, should enable North Korea to enrich uranium into nuclear fuel and add to its arsenal of 8 to 12 nuclear weapons.
Taken together, the nuclear demonstration and the attack were widely interpreted as an effort to bolster the credentials of Kim Jong-un, the heir apparent as the country’s leader, and the son and grandson of the only two men who have run the country. When his father, Kim Jong-il, North Korea’s ailing leader, was establishing his credentials, the North conducted a similar series of attacks.
“They have a 60-year history of military provocations — it’s in their DNA,” said a senior administration official. “What we are trying to do is break the cycle,” a cycle, he said, that has North Korea’s bad behavior rewarded with “talks, inducements and rewards.” He said that the shelling would delay any effort to resume the six-nation talks about the North’s nuclear program.
While Mr. Obama was elected on a promise of diplomatic engagement, his strategy toward the North for the past two years, called “strategic patience,” has been to demonstrate that Washington would not engage until the North ceased provocations and demonstrated that it was living up to past commitments to dismantle, and ultimately give up, its nuclear capacity.
The provocations have now increased markedly, and it is not clear what new options are available. Beijing’s first reaction on Tuesday was to call for a resumption of the six-nation talks involving North and South Korea, Russia, Japan, China and the United States. The last meeting was two years ago, at the end of the Bush administration.
Mr. Obama’s aides made it clear in interviews that the United States had no intention of returning to those talks soon. But its leverage is limited.
When North Korea set off a nuclear test last year just months after Mr. Obama took office, the United States won passage of a United Nations Security Council resolution that imposed far harsher sanctions. The sanctions gave countries the right, and responsibility, to board North Korean ships and planes that landed at ports around the world and to inspect them for weapons. The effort seemed partly successful — but the equipment in the centrifuge plant is so new that it is clear that the trade restrictions did not stop the North from building what Siegfried S. Hecker, the visiting scientist, called an “ultramodern” nuclear complex.http://airforcepundit.blogspot.com/2010/11/korean-clash-forces-us-to-weigh-options.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Captain Jarred Fishman, USAFR)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9085796.post-2001573047995589416Fri, 12 Nov 2010 16:14:00 +00002010-11-12T11:15:18.346-05:00Al-Qaeda's 'sword of justice' and the coming war of attrition with the WestBy Praveen Swami World Last updated: November 12th, 2010
22 Comments Comment on this article
His name could be Muhammad Ibrahim Makkawi or Ibrahim al-Madani and some people used to call him Omar al-Somali. The Federal Bureau of Investigations, which wants him for murder and conspiracy to kill, says he’s dark-eyed, olive-skinned and was born in 1960. Or perhaps it was 1963.
Bar his vainglorious pseudonym Saif al-Adel – which means ‘the sword of justice’ – there is little public-domain knowledge about the man Osama bin-Laden has picked as al-Qaeda’s new chief for operations targeting the West. We know this much, though: he’s among the most skilled and dangerous operatives al-Qaeda has ever had.
Al-Adel wants to conduct a prolonged war of attrition against the West, built around low-cost, low-risk operations, like the bombs planted on cargo flights out of Yemen. He hopes this will push Western governments to retreat from Afghanistan, and to back away from brewing conflicts in north Africa, the middle-east and central Asia.
If the plan works, it will open the way for al-Qaeda to wield power in an Islamist-run state, like Afghanistan was before 9/11 . Al-Adel opposed those attacks on the reasonable grounds that it would provoke US retaliation, strip al-Qaeda of a safe base, and thus inflict long-term damage on the jihadist movement.
Parts of al-Adel’s thinking can be pieced together from a memoir he wrote in 2005. In 1987, the memoir records, al-Adel was a colonel in Egypt’s special forces. He was arrested that year on charges of aiding the Egyptian terror group al-Jihad. Prosecutors said he had planned to drive a bomb-laden truck into Egypt’s parliament, and to crash an aircraft into the building – tactics that al-Qaeda would later use to effect.
But al-Adel was less than impressed by his al-Jihad brothers-in-arms, holding them guilty of “over-enthusiasm that resulted in hasty action.”
For reasons that remain unclear, al-Adel was let out of prison and travelled to Peshawar in Pakistan.
In 1991-1992, he trained al-Qaeda jihadists at camp near Khost, in Afghanistan. Later, he travelled to Khartoum, providing explosives training at bin-Laden’s Damazine Farm base. Mohammed Odeh, a jihadist jailed in the US, recalls al-Adel telling him that as the fighting in Afghanistan was winding down, it was time to “move the jihad to other parts of the world.”
For the next several years, al-Adel hopped between al-Qaeda training facilities in Asia and Africa. He negotiated an alliance with jihadists in Iraq, and plotted to assassinate Australian mining magnate and orthodox Rabbi Joseph ‘Diamond Joe’ Gutnick
Like other top al-Qaeda operatives, al-Adel was involved in planning the 9/11 attacks. In July, 2001, however, al-Qaeda leaders were told the operation did not have the support of Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban’s supreme leader. The US’s official investigation of the 9/11 strikes, records Mullah Omar’s dissent was endorsed by al-Adel and his associates Mahfouz al-Walid and Mustafa Uthman.
Following the US invasion of Afghanistan in October, 2001, al-Adel left for Iran. US intelligence believes he masterminded several attacks on US targets while based there. In response to US pressure, Iran later detained al-Qaeda leaders operating from its soil. Al-Adel lived under house arrest near Tehran with his wife and children until April, when he was released in return for a kidnapped Iranian diplomat.
There are two big reasons why the world needs to be paying special attention to al-Adel’s new project.
First, as the Australian counter-terrorism analyst Leah Farrall has been pointing out, the top al-Qaeda leadership holed out in the war-torn Afghanistan-Pakistan borderlands is still key to the global jihadist project.
US intelligence officials had been claiming to have degraded al-Qaeda to the point of no-return, but that’s starting to sound suspiciously like a declaration of victory intended to hide a precipitate retreat. “Like a snake backed into a corner,” the terrorism expert Peter Bergen pointed in a review of al-Qaeda’s capabilities, “a weakened al-Qaeda isn’t necessarily less dangerous.”
That means the West needs to prepare itself to deal with the war of attrition al-Adel is planning – which, like all wars of attrition, will be messy and unpopular.
Second, a resurgent al-Qaeda could tip the balance of power in an ongoing struggle between a battered Taliban leadership open to talking peace and a new generation of radicals.
In November, 2009, Mullah Omar, issued a statement assuring “all countries that the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, as a responsible force, will not extend its hand to cause jeopardy to others.” That statement is the foundation of hopes for a dialogue that could lead to peace.
But Afghanistan analyst Anand Gopal recently noted that a new generation of Taleban commanders were increasingly bucking their leadership, and raised the prospect that the organisation’s top leadership in Pakistan may not be able “to enforce decisions on its rank-and-file.”
Even an the end of war with the Taliban, this suggests, might not mean the beginning of peace.
In a 1939 essay, Abul Ala Mawdudi, the ideological patriarch of the global jihadist movement, argued that the pursuit of power, rather than what he called a “hotchpotch of beliefs, prayers and rituals”, constituted the essence of Islam. The religion, he wrote in Jihad Fi’Sabilillah [Jihad in the Way of God], was in fact “a revolutionary ideology which seeks to alter the social order of the entire world.” This made it imperative, in Mawdudi’s view, for Islamists to “seize the authority of state”.
Al-Adel is working to that end. The world must decide on the price it’s willing to pay to stop him.http://airforcepundit.blogspot.com/2010/11/al-qaedas-sword-of-justice-and-coming.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Captain Jarred Fishman, USAFR)6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9085796.post-1926700856835577509Thu, 11 Nov 2010 13:37:00 +00002010-11-11T08:37:56.469-05:00Osama bin Laden appoints new commander to spearhead war on WestOsama bin Laden has appointed a new commander to spearhead al-Qaeda's offensive of operations against the West.
By Praveen Swami, Diplomatic Editor
Known to western intelligence services by the alias Saif al-Adel, or "Sword of the Just", al-Qaeda's new chief of international operations is believed to have conceived of the wave of strikes that set off terror alerts across Europe recently, as well as last week's mid-air parcel-bomb plot.
US and Pakistani sources have told The Daily Telegraph that al-Adel is running several similar operations as part of a war of attrition intended to persuade Western public opinion that the war against terror is unwinnable. This would clear the road for al-Qaeda to capture power in fragile states such as Somalia and Yemen.
"His strategy", said Syed Saleem Shahzad, a Pakistani expert on al-Qaeda, "is to stage multiple small terror operations, using the resources of affiliates and allies wherever possible."
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A US counter-terrorism official said the idea was for "small-but-often attacks" that would hurt the West more than a "one-off terror spectacular".
In 2005, al-Adel authored an al-Qaeda planning document that holds clues to his thinking. The document said that Islamist movements failed because their "actions were mostly random". It called for al-Qaeda to focus on "the greater objective, which is the establishment of a state". The new attrition strategy marks the triumph of a minority faction within al-Qaeda who had opposed the 9/11 attacks, arguing that the inevitable US retaliation against Afghanistan would cost the jihadist movement its only secure base.
In 2002, jihadist internet forums carried a letter purported to have been written by al-Adel, criticising bin Laden's leadership. Little was heard of al-Adel, who was held by Iran with a group of al-Qaeda fugitives, for several years thereafter. The fugitives were housed in villas along Iran's Caspian coast and in Lazivan, north-west of Tehran. Al-Adel lived there with his five children and wife Wafa, who is the daughter of Mustafa Hamid, another top al-Qaeda figure.
But in April this year, he was released from Iranian custody along with Saad bin Laden, Osama bin Laden's son, and top al-Qaeda operatives Suleiman al-Gaith and Mahfouz al-Walid.
Iran swapped the terrorists for Heshmatollah Attarzadeh, a Pakistan-based diplomat kidnapped by al-Qaeda last year.
Little is known about the shadowy al-Adel, who is also known by the names Muhammad al-Makkawi and Ibrahim al-Madani. Born in Egypt, al-Adel is said to have served as a colonel in its Special Forces. He was, however, arrested in 1987 along with several jihadists.
Egyptian prosecutors claimed that al-Adel's plans included crashing an aircraft into the Egypt's parliament, or driving a bomb-laden truck into the building – both tactics al-Qaeda later used to devastating effect.
Later, documents filed by US prosecutors show, al-Adel worked as an instructor at al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan and Somalia, and participated in several attacks. In 2000, Austrian investigators found he played a key role in a plot to assassinate Joseph "Diamond Joe" Hicks – a mining magnate who is also a leading member of a religious Jewish group.http://airforcepundit.blogspot.com/2010/11/osama-bin-laden-appoints-new-commander.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Captain Jarred Fishman, USAFR)74tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9085796.post-1899038122005434029Tue, 09 Nov 2010 22:01:00 +00002010-11-10T08:22:33.596-05:00Let's Help out our Navy Brothers..I have recently been informed of this situation through some other officers- and think all of us Milbloggers should try and bring some assistance where we can. Four Sailors were accused, tried, and convicted of raping and murdering a woman in Norfolk, Virginia.
All of them "confessed" to the crime under the interrogation of an infamous policeman who is now convicted and facing jail himself for breaking the law (official corruption and making false statements to the FBI) in another case. Shockingly, none of the "confessions" actually matched the crime, none of them matched one another, and several sailors gave confessions that contradicted their earlier confessions: one confessed to beating the victim, when she was actually stabbed and strangled; some confessed to sex acts that didn't actually happen; some of them claimed the crime occurred in the wrong location; one claimed they broke into the apartment by forcing the door open using a claw hammer when there was actually no sign of forced entry; etc. Still worse, the same prosecutor tried all four guys. Most shocking, none of the sailors DNA matched and the crime scene cried out that this was a single-offender crime, not a gang rape. To top it all off, the actual murderer (already in jail for two other violent assaults against women, including the rape of a 14 year old girl) came forward, his DNA matched that found on/in the victim, and he has sworn under oath that he committed the crime by himself. So, the appeals began.
Unfortunately, it is VERY hard to undo a conviction based on a confession, and basically impossible if the habeas clock has run out and claims of judicial nullification on the basis of actual innocence are extremely difficult. Governor Kaine of Virginia let the N4 out of prison with a partial pardon, but they're still tagged with the sex offender yoke and other problems. They should receive a full pardon and the current Governor McDonnell should vacate their false convictions.
Let's try and make it happen!http://airforcepundit.blogspot.com/2010/11/lets-help-out-our-navy-brothers.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Captain Jarred Fishman, USAFR)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9085796.post-5398312634350147388Tue, 09 Nov 2010 13:26:00 +00002010-11-09T08:27:19.333-05:00Countering China, Obama Backs India for U.N. CouncilBy SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and JIM YARDLEY New York Times
NEW DELHI — By endorsing India for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, President Obama on Monday signaled the United States’ intention to create a deeper partnership of the world’s two largest democracies that would expand commercial ties and check the influence of an increasingly assertive China.
Mr. Obama’s announcement, made during a nationally televised address to the Indian Parliament, came at the end of a three-day visit to India that won high marks from an Indian political establishment once uncertain of the president’s commitment to the relationship. Even as stark differences remained between the countries on a range of tough issues, including Pakistan, trade policy, climate change and, to some degree, Iran, Mr. Obama spoke of India as an “indispensable” partner for the coming century.
“In Asia and around the world, India is not simply emerging,” he said during his speech in Parliament. “India has emerged.”
Mr. Obama’s closer embrace of India prompted a sharp warning from Pakistan, India’s rival and an uncertain ally of the United States in the war in Afghanistan, which criticized the two countries for engaging in “power politics” that lacked a moral foundation.
It is also likely to set off fresh concerns in Beijing, which has had a contentious relationship with India and has expressed alarm at American efforts to tighten alliances with Asian nations wary of China’s rising power.
But warmer ties between the United States and India, in the making for many years, come at a crucial time for Mr. Obama. He and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh are headed to South Korea later this week for a meeting of the Group of 20, apparently in agreement on what is expected to be a significant clash between the world’s big powers over the United States Federal Reserve’s plan to boost the American economy by pumping $600 billion into it.
China, Brazil and Germany have sharply criticized the move by the independent Fed, which they see as intended to push down the value of the dollar to boost American exports. Germany’s finance minister equated the move to currency manipulation “with the help of their central bank’s printing presses.”
But at a Monday news conference, Mr. Obama defended the Fed’s move and won backing from Mr. Singh, who spoke about the United States’ critical importance to the global economy.
“Anything that would stimulate the underlying growth and policies of entrepreneurship in the United States would help the cause of global prosperity,” he said.
The good will between Mr. Obama and Mr. Singh, as well as the almost giddy reaction to the president and his wife, Michelle, in the Indian press, lent a glossy sheen to a United States-India relationship that is still evolving.
India remains deeply protective of its sovereignty, while the United States is accustomed to having the upper hand with its foreign partners. On Monday, Mr. Singh emphasized the need for the two countries “to work as equal partners in a strategic relationship.”
“For India, going back to the earliest days since independence, there has always been a very strong attachment to strategic autonomy,” said Teresita C. Schaffer, director of the South Asia program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “Americans throw around the word ‘ally’ with gay abandon.”
Mr. Obama arrived in India on Saturday bearing a big gift: his decision to lift longstanding export controls on sensitive technologies, albeit with some of the specifics still unclear. And the president also made several small-bore announcements about new collaborations between the nations on everything from homeland security to education, agriculture and open government.
Many Indian analysts said Mr. Obama had big shoes to fill, given the popularity here of his two predecessors. President George W. Bush is viewed with admiration, largely for his work securing a civil nuclear cooperation pact. And former President Bill Clinton, who in 2000 became the first American president to visit India in two decades, is fondly remembered for his gregarious personality and his own speech in Parliament, credited for reviving the relationship.
The headline moment of the trip was Mr. Obama’s announcement on the United Nations seat, even though the endorsement is seemingly as much symbolic as substantive, given the serious political obstacles that have long stalled efforts to reform membership of the Security Council.
All the major powers have said the post-World War II structure of the Security Council, in which the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China have permanent seats with veto power, should be changed to reflect a different balance of power. But it could take years for any changes to be made, partly because there is no agreement on which countries should be promoted to an enlarged Security Council.
The United States has promised to support a promotion for Japan and now India. China is viewed as far less eager for its Asian neighbors to acquire permanent membership in the Council.
But administration officials and independent analysts emphasized the significance of the president’s political message.
Ben Rhodes, a top foreign policy adviser to Mr. Obama, said the endorsement was intended to send a strong message “in terms of how we see India on the world stage.” Meanwhile, in Washington, even critics who had blamed Mr. Obama for letting the relationship with India drift reacted with praise — and surprise.
“It’s a bold move — no president has said that before,” said Richard Fontaine, a former adviser to Senator John McCain who wrote a critical report of Mr. Obama’s India policy last month for the Center for New American Security. “It’s a recognition of India’s emergence as a global power and the United States’ desire to be close to India.”
But any outreach to India is bound to cause problems for Mr. Obama in Pakistan. In Islamabad, Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry warned that Mr. Obama’s decision would further complicate the process of reforming the Security Council. Pakistan, the ministry said in a statement, hopes the United States “will take a moral view and not base itself on any temporary expediency or exigencies of power politics.”
For Mr. Obama, the Pakistan-India-United States nexus creates a delicate dance. The Obama administration is selling warplanes to Pakistan, a move viewed with suspicion here.
During his three-day visit, the president faced criticism for being too soft on Pakistan; during a question and answer session with college students, one demanded to know why he had not declared Pakistan a “terrorist state.” And even Mr. Singh, standing by the president’s side at a joint news conference Monday, reiterated India’s position that it could not have meaningful talks with Pakistan until it shut down the “terror machine” inside its borders.
But if Mr. Obama’s cautious language on Pakistan provoked initial unease, his speech at Parliament seemed to put the matter to rest when he called on the Pakistani government to eradicate “safe havens” for terrorism groups and prosecute the perpetrators of the November 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai that killed at least 168 people.
“Indians were keen to listen to two ‘p’ words,” said Rajiv Nayan, a strategic affairs analyst in New Delhi. “Permanent membership of the United Nations Security Council and, second, on Pakistan.”http://airforcepundit.blogspot.com/2010/11/countering-china-obama-backs-india-for.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Captain Jarred Fishman, USAFR)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9085796.post-1866268117612790468Mon, 08 Nov 2010 14:32:00 +00002010-11-08T09:32:25.287-05:00Disputes, disappointment strain U.S.-China relationsBy Keith B. Richburg
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 8, 2010; A04
BEIJING - When President Obama came to China a year ago, on his first official Asian trip, he spoke of the "deep and even dramatic ties" between the two powers that would work as partners on shared global burdens such as climate change, nonproliferation and the world economy.
On his return to Asia - a trip that pointedly bypasses China - the talk of partnership and shared burdens has been largely replaced by a deep mutual mistrust, with widespread disappointment on both sides.
In the intervening 12 months, Chinese leaders became infuriated when Obama met with the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, whom China has branded a separatist criminal, and when Washington announced plans to sell sophisticated weapons to Taiwan.
U.S. officials tried in vain to get China's leaders in May to condemn its ally North Korea for the sinking of a South Korean warship, and then became alarmed at Beijing's bellicose response to a September incident involving a Chinese fishing boat and a Japanese patrol ship around a group of disputed, uninhabited islands.
In between there have been disputes over trade - involving tires, car parts and chicken - and questions of whether China is manipulating its currency.
What happened over the past year, experts agree, was a case of heightened expectations on both sides crashing into realities on the ground - to the point where relations now between the United States and China are at one of the lowest points in years.
President Hu Jintao's planned state visit to Washington in January could help reset the relationship with China, according to experts on both sides.
The deterioration has come against a backdrop of a China that is feeling increasingly emboldened - having weathered the global financial crisis while the United States continues to struggle - and that has become more confident in pressing its interests in the region and around the world, Chinese and American analysts said.
Several experts agreed that there was no single issue that caused the downturn, but rather an accumulation of unrelated events combined with some crossed signals and big misunderstandings of each other's positions.
"Each side has been concerned about what it's seen the other side doing," said Kenneth Lieberthal, a China specialist with the Brookings Institution in Washington. "What you have is a cascading set of developments that have no single cause or linear connection."
At the center of the initial misunderstanding, both U.S. and Chinese analysts said, was the Obama administration's early outreach to China to become a partner in tackling such issues as Iran and North Korea.
The U.S. administration saw this as giving China a greater voice in global affairs commensurate with its new status as an economic giant. But the Chinese leaders' response was essentially: Okay, but what do we get out of it?
"Early on, when the Obama administration took office, they promised China more face and status in global affairs," said Shi Yinhong, director of the Center on American Studies at Renmin University. "Later, the Chinese government found that the Obama administration wanted so many things from China."
Shi said many of the U.S. demands "can seriously harm China's interests, for example the appreciation of renminbi, and asking China to sell out Iran." He added, "A big promise comes with a big price."
As the price for that cooperation on global issues, Chinese leaders assumed they would make progress on two core issues - stopping U.S. weapons sales to Taiwan, and not giving a White House platform to the Dalai Lama - and thought they had extracted U.S. concessions on both last year, analysts said.
First, Obama decided not to meet with the Dalai Lama in Washington in October 2009 - breaking a precedent of U.S. presidents seeing the spiritual leader going back to 1991. Administration officials at the time said they were only "postponing" meeting the Dalai Lama until after Obama's China trip. But Chinese leaders apparently saw the move as more permanent, analysts said.
Also, this January, the administration announced plans to sell $6 billion worth of Patriot antimissile systems, helicopters and communications equipment to Taiwan - provoking a furious response from China, which then canceled planned military exchanges.
The U.S. side was clearly surprised by the reaction - every U.S. president had sold arms to Taiwan. The package did not include the most sensitive weapons Taiwan wants, which are F-16 fighter jets. And U.S. officials had forewarned their Chinese counterparts of the pending sale.
Besides, U.S. officials believed, the global issues on the table were far too important to be disrupted by a minor perennial irritant such as arms sales to Taiwan.
But Chinese leaders clearly saw a link between their cooperation on global issues such as climate change, Iran and North Korea, and American arms sales to Taiwan.
"The U.S. thinks China's recent reactions are provocative or even arrogant," said Yuan Peng, director of the Institute of American Studies at the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations. "But China thinks that China didn't change. Taiwan and meeting the Dalai Lama have always been the core interests of China. These are never minor issues.
"China is disappointed by the Obama administration," Yuan added. "Before, China thought Obama was the president for change, and he would have some new thoughts about cooperation between great nations. However, he has no essential difference from other previous presidents."
Tao Wenzhao, a fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said Washington should get used to the fact that China and the United States are two different counties. "There will be different opinions and different interests in some areas."http://airforcepundit.blogspot.com/2010/11/disputes-disappointment-strain-us-china.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Captain Jarred Fishman, USAFR)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9085796.post-3897076047011102101Thu, 04 Nov 2010 19:40:00 +00002010-11-04T15:41:08.506-04:00Ahmadinejad accuses Russia of being influenced by 'Satan'Russian ban on sale of S-300 missiles
By Ali Akbar Dareini (CP) – 1 day ago
TEHRAN, Iran — Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad criticized Russia on Wednesday for banning the delivery of S-300 anti-aircraft missile systems to Tehran, accusing Moscow of having caved in to "Satan."
In comments broadcast on state TV, Ahmadinejad said the 2007 contract Tehran signed with Moscow for the S-300 remains valid and warned that Russia must pay compensation and penalties for unilaterally cancelling the deal.
The Iranian leader's remarks come after Russian President Dmitry Medvedev issued a decree in June banning all sales of the S-300 systems to Iran, saying the latest round of U.N. sanctions prevent it from delivering the system to Tehran.
The U.N. Security Council sanctions ban Iran from developing ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons, investing in nuclear-related activities and buying certain types of heavy weapons. But they do not specifically prohibit Russia from supplying the S-300.
The anti-defence system is capable of shooting down aircraft and missiles at ranges of over 90 miles (144 kilometres) and at altitudes of about 90,000 feet (27,432 metres). The system could have boosted Iran's ability to defend against airstrikes. Israel and the United States had objected to the deal.
"Some people are influenced by Satan. They thought the Iranian nation will be harmed if they unilaterally and illegally stop or cancel defence contracts they signed with us," Ahmadinejad said. He did not mention Russia by name, but it was clear that he was referring to Medvedev and the Russian leadership. Ahmadinejad said Moscow must pay compensation for cancelling the deal.
"The contract is valid. They must implement it. If they don't, the Iranian nation will obtain its rights including compensation and penalties," he said.
Sergei Chemezov, the head of Russia's state-controlled Russian Technologies, said last month Moscow will return $166.8 million it received as payment from Iran. But he insisted that Russia owes nothing else to Iran, since the 2007 contract for the delivery of the S-300 missiles was cancelled because of UN sanctions on Iran.
Ahmadinejad said Iran's security won't be at risk without the missiles.http://airforcepundit.blogspot.com/2010/11/ahmadinejad-accuses-russia-of-being.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Captain Jarred Fishman, USAFR)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9085796.post-7263846192211643916Wed, 03 Nov 2010 13:47:00 +00002010-11-03T09:48:07.641-04:00GOP seizes control of House, as economy drives party gainsBy Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 3, 2010; NaN
Just four years after surrendering power, Republicans recaptured control of the House and made gains in the Senate on Tuesday night, in a major rebuff of President Obama and the Democrats by an electorate worried about the economy and the size of the government.
But in the most closely watched race of the year, Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid defeated Sharron Angle, the tea party Republican who carried the hopes of conservatives across the country to beat the Senate's most powerful Democrat.
In Washington, Republicans staged a jubilant victory party. "Across the country right now, we are witnessing a repudiation of Washington, a repudiation of big government and a repudiation of politicians who refuse to listen to the people," said an emotional Rep. John A. Boehner (Ohio), who is now poised to become the next House speaker.
Obama called Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) once it was clear that the House had fallen to the GOP. The president said he looked forward to working with Republicans "to find common ground, move the country forward and get things done for the American people," according to the White House. Boehner, according to aides, said he will deal with the president in a "straightforward and honest" way.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who became the target of Republicans in their campaigns, issued a statement early Wednesday. "The outcome of the election does not diminish the work we have done for the American people," she said. "We must all strive to find common ground to support the middle class, create jobs, reduce the deficit and move our nation forward."
Republican candidates were propelled by a combination of voter anxiety about the economy and a significant shift in sentiment among independents, who were critical to Obama's 2008 victory and to the Democrats' takeover of Congress in 2006. Democratic efforts to rally young people and minorities also fell short. Both groups voted in smaller percentages than two years ago.
In House races, Democratic incumbents fell throughout the night as, from the moment the polls began to close, Republicans marched steadily toward the 39 seats they needed to win the majority. The GOP crossed that threshold before midnight and continued to pick up seats as the counting went on in the West.
By 1 a.m., Republican gains hit 55 seats. That wiped out all the gains that Democrats made in 2006 and 2008 and slid past the 54 seats the GOP achieved in its 1994 landslide. Republicans picked up at least three seats in Florida, Illinois, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia.
The GOP wave in the House spared few of the most vulnerable Democrats. Rep. John M. Spratt Jr. (S.C.), the chairman of the House Budget Committee who was bidding for his 15th term, lost his race, as did 17-term Rep. Ike Skelton (Mo.) , chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, and 10-term Rep. Chet Edwards (Tex.).
Newer Democrats who embraced Obama's agenda were turned out, including Rep. Tom Perriello in Virginia and Rep. John Boccieri in Ohio. But some Democrats who did not embrace all of the president's major initiatives were also defeated.
Democrats hold on to Senate
Republicans gained at least six Senate seats but were blocked from winning the 10 needed to take control of that chamber as Democrats held enough of their most endangered states.
Early in the evening, Republicans picked off a Democratic seat in Arkansas, where Rep. John Boozman defeated Blanche Lincoln. Lincoln, who survived a tough primary, was the first Senate incumbent to lose. Later, Democratic Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.), who began the year on no one's list of endangered incumbents, lost to Republican businessman Ron Johnson.
In Indiana, former congressman Dan Coats (R) scored an easy victory over Rep. Brad Ellsworth (D) for a seat being vacated by Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh. Another Republican gain came in North Dakota, where Gov. John Hoeven easily captured the seat of retiring Democratic Sen. Byron L. Dorgan.
Republicans also won a Senate seat in Pennsylvania - where Republican Pat Toomey defeated Rep. Joe Sestak, who had beaten party-switching Sen. Arlen Specter in the Democratic primary - and just after midnight they added the Senate seat Obama once held in Illinois. There, Rep. Mark Steven Kirk (R) defeated Alexi Giannoulias (D) in one of the year's nastiest campaigns.
But in West Virginia's Senate race, Gov. Joe Manchin III (D), who appeared in trouble only a few weeks ago, defeated Republican businessman John Raese.
And Democratic control of the Senate was assured just before midnight, when Sen. Barbara Boxer (Calif.) was declared the winner in her bitter contest against former Hewlett-Packard chief executive Carly Fiorina.
That meant that, for the first time in eight decades, the House changed hands without the Senate following suit.
The final balance of the Senate remained in doubt Tuesday night, with several Democratic incumbents in contests too close to call, including races in Illinois, Colorado and Washington. The other race still outstanding was in Alaska, where Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R), waging a write-in campaign, was leading over tea party favorite Joe Miller, who won the GOP primary. Democrat Scott McAdams was running third.
In Kentucky's Senate race, tea party favorite Rand Paul (R) handily defeated state Attorney General Jack Conway (D) to keep the seat in the GOP column. "There's a tea party tidal wave, and we're sending a message," Paul told cheering supporters at his victory party.
In Florida, Republican Marco Rubio, another tea-party-backed candidate, cruised to a Senate victory against Rep. Kendrick Meek (D) and Gov. Charlie Crist, who quit the GOP to run as an independent.
O'Donnell loses in Delaware
One of the most prominent tea party Republicans, Christine O'Donnell, lost her bid for the Senate in Delaware, as Democrat Chris Coons won the seat once occupied by Vice President Biden. O'Donnell had been a surprise winner over Rep. Michael N. Castle in the GOP primary. But her quirky style - in her first television ad she declared, "I am not a witch" - instantly converted a likely Republican pickup into a seat that was firmly in the Democrats' hands.
Her loss was a reminder that while the tea party helped fuel the GOP surge this year, some of the candidates most favored by tea party activists proved shaky in general election contests.
In Connecticut, Republican Linda McMahon, the former head of World Wrestling Entertainment, lost her Senate race against state Attorney General Richard Blumenthal (D), despite spending about $50 million of her own money.
Republicans held their Senate seat in Ohio, where former congressman and George W. Bush administration budget director Rob Portman cruised past the Democrat, Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher. In Missouri, another House veteran, Rep. Roy Blunt (R), kept for his party the seat held by retiring Sen. Christopher S. Bond.
In New Hampshire, Republican state Attorney General Kelly Ayotte won the seat of retiring Sen. Judd Gregg (R), while in Kansas, Rep. Jerry Moran (R) took the seat of Sen. Sam Brownback (R), who won the governor's race there.
Republican incumbents won their reelection bids in Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Iowa, Louisiana, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina and South Dakota. Democrats were reelected in Maryland, in New York (both Senate seats) and in Vermont.
Republicans also made gains in governor's races, picking up at least nine seats while surrendering two, including one to an independent candidate, Rhode Island's Lincoln Chafee.
Republicans won the major industrial and Midwestern states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa. They won two conservative bastions, Kansas and Tennessee, that had been in Democratic hands, as well as New Mexico. In Texas, Democrats fell far short in their effort to unseat Gov. Rick Perry (R).
Democrats regained the governorship of California, however, when former governor and current state Attorney General Jerry Brown defeated former eBay chief executive Meg Whitman, despite the roughly $160 million she spent on her candidacy, most of it from her own pocket.
Races in Florida, Illinois, Connecticut, Maine, Minnesota, Oregon and Vermont were still being counted.
Economy is the main worry
With the unemployment rate at 9.6 percent nationwide, economic issues dominated the voters' agenda Tuesday. More than six in 10 called the economy their top concern, according to preliminary national exit poll data. About nine in 10 said the economy is in bad shape, and more than three times as many said they believe it is getting worse.
About half of all voters said they are "very worried" about the national economy, and most of them backed Republican House candidates.
Just 44 percent of voters said they approve of Obama's performance as president, according to preliminary findings, with 55 percent saying they disapprove. Significantly more voters said their vote was a message of opposition to the president than a sign of support - 37 percent to 24 percent.http://airforcepundit.blogspot.com/2010/11/gop-seizes-control-of-house-as-economy.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Captain Jarred Fishman, USAFR)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9085796.post-6417256339886960804Tue, 02 Nov 2010 14:18:00 +00002010-11-02T10:18:47.357-04:00Cargo plane bombs more lethal than Christmas Day attempt; Yemen charges Aulaqi in absentiaBy Peter Finn and Greg Miller
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, November 2, 2010; 5:36 AM
The two package bombs discovered on cargo flights last week contained far more explosive material than the device that the alleged would-be underwear bomber planned to use last Christmas to down a Detroit-bound jetliner, according to German security officials.
The officials said the bombs were so expertly built that the wiring was difficult to detect even when seen in an X-ray image.
The German officials, who briefed reporters in Berlin, said the bomb found on a UPS plane in England, which also passed through the Cologne-Bonn airport, contained 15.11 ounces, or 400 grams, of the explosive PETN. The second device, found at a FedEx facility in Dubai, contained 10.58 ounces of the material, a powerful plastic explosive.
The PETN-based bomb found on Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian accused of attempting to bring down a Northwest flight from Amsterdam to Detroit, weighed 2.82 ounces.
Meanwhile, U.S. officials disclosed Monday that authorities had tracked earlier suspicious packages from al-Qaeda's Yemen-based affiliate in September, attempts now seen as potential test runs for the foiled bombing attempt a month later.
A U.S. official said that three September shipments were also sent to an address or addresses in Chicago and contained books and religious literature, but no explosives. The official, who was not authorized to speak publicly on the subject, said that the packages were intercepted because of intelligence indicating that they had been sent by a person affiliated with AQAP.
One or more of the packages was allowed to continue to Chicago, but the U.S. official said that the concerns raised by that episode - first reported by ABC News - help to explain why the U.S. reaction was so swift to the Saudi intelligence tip last week.
The shipments of earlier packages might have enabled AQAP to monitor their delivery using tracking services commonly available on shippers' Web sites, information that might have been used in connections with timers or other devices to maximize the damage caused by bombs.
Both of the bombs discovered last week were encased in ink cartridges. One German official described the design as "highly professional," saying that some of the wires were so well disguised they they looked like cables for a printer. Other wires were so thin they couldn't be seen on an X-ray, the official said, echoing other analyses in recent days that the bombs could beat X-ray machines and bomb-sniffing dogs.
The bombs are believed to be the handiwork of Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri, a Saudi national active in al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the group behind the Christmas Day plot, among other conspiracies.
Explosive experts say that the amount of PETN in the ink cartridges could have brought the planes down.
Jimmie Oxley, co-director of the Center of Excellence for Explosives Detection, Mitigation and Response at the University of Rhode Island, said that if the packages ended up on a pallet surrounded by other cargo, the planes could have survived an explosion, but that if they had been placed near the skin of the planes, detonations could have destroyed the aircraft in mid-air.
"I've been involved in blowing up luggage, and placement determines everything," Oxley said.
Both packages were addressed to synagogues in Chicago, and Oxley said either could have killed someone if it had exploded while being opened.
On Tuesday, prosecutors in Yemen announced that they had charged Yemeni-American cleric Anwar al-Aulaqi with "promoting violence and the killing of foreigners," the Associated Press reported.
The whereabouts of Aulaqi, who U.S. intelligence officials believe was involved in the failed Christmas Day bombing attempt and has long promoted violence against the United States, are not known. Yemeni officials said he was being charged in absentia in the "Specialized Criminal Court" in Sanaa, the capital.
It is the first formal legal action Yemen has taken against Aulaqi, who was born in New Mexico.
On Monday, Germany said it would halt direct passenger flights between Germany and Yemen; Britain took a similar step in January after the failed Christmas Day bombing attempt. There are no direct flights between the United States and Yemen.
Britain said Monday that it would extend a ban on unaccompanied freight from Yemen to Somalia, citing links between terrorists in both countries.
Home Secretary Theresa May said Britain's security services had no information that other bombs have eluded detection.
"At this stage, we have no information to suggest that another attack of a similar nature by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is imminent," May told parliament.
Meanwhile, investigators in the United Arab Emirates tried to head off speculation of a link between the package bombs and the crash of a UPS cargo plane in Dubai in September. There was no evidence that the plane was brought down by an explosion, UAE officials said this week.
The explosives in Dubai and England were intercepted after Saudi officials tipped off the United States and other countries that bombs were in transit and provided tracking numbers of the shipments to help intercept them.
Yemeni officials said Monday that the Saudis were told of the plot by Jabir al-Fayfi, a former Guantanamo Bay detainee, who fled the kingdom after his release in 2006.
But Gregory Johnsen, a doctoral candidate at Princeton University and an expert on Yemen, noted in his blog, Waq al-Waq, that al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula announced Fayfi's arrest on Sept. 6, which seems too far removed from the latest plot to make him a credible informant. A U.S. official concurred.http://airforcepundit.blogspot.com/2010/11/cargo-plane-bombs-more-lethal-than.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Captain Jarred Fishman, USAFR)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9085796.post-2408635559328941091Mon, 01 Nov 2010 13:13:00 +00002010-11-01T09:14:07.241-04:00UPS Cargo Bomb Plot Is More Sophisticated Al Qaeda AttackCargo plane bomb plot: Cobra review 'could lead to new security measures'
The al-Qaeda parcel bomb plot could leave passengers facing a raft of safeguards as the Government undertakes a new review of security on passenger jets.
By Gordon Rayner, Duncan Gardham and Andrew Hough
Published: 9:30AM GMT 01 Nov 2010
Previous1 of 8 ImagesNext Airport security official uses sniffer dog to search for food in luggage of incoming passengers. Industry figures fear new wave of measures. Photo: REUTERS
A man undergoes a security the airport: it could lead to more stringent checks. Photo: AP
A security officer checks luggage, while others view x-ray check results: the government is reviewing security. Photo: AP
Police and investigators look at what remains of the flight deck of Pan Am 103 on a field in Lockerbie, Scotland Photo: AP
The devices contained a highly explosive combination of PETN (Pentaerythritol tetranitrate) and lead azide.
The packages travelled on a Qatar airways flight. Photo: ALAMY
Women protest outside the university in Sana'a where Hanan al Samawi is studying medicine Photo: AFP/GETTY
US and British security officials believe Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born figurehead of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) was behind the foiled attack
Both bombs found last week were transported in the hold of passenger flights, suggesting that the terrorists were targeting tourists and other travellers, rather than simply trying to bring down cargo planes, as had previously been thought.
David Cameron is today chairing a crisis meeting of Cobra, the government's emergency planning committee, to discuss the plot and what implications it could have on air transport.
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Cargo plane bomb plot in pictures
Telegraph's terror coverage in full Industry figures fear it could lead to a new, and unneccesary, overhaul of airport security after investigators concluded that the terrorists had designed a package to blow up passenger jets in a Lockerbie-style terrorist outrage.
Ministers and officials are expected to discuss tougher checks on freight.
The review could lead air passengers to be subjected to "ludicrous" new security measures, the boss of budget airline Ryanair.
Michael O'Leary, the airline's chief executive, said authorities might now make travel "even more uncomfortable and tedious" for travellers.
The device found at East Midlands airport on Friday had left Yemen on a passenger aircraft, The Daily Telegraph has learnt, before it was switched to a UPS cargo plane. The second device, found in Dubai, was carried on two Qatar Airways passenger flights before it was intercepted.
Sources close to the investigation in Yemen said because there were no scheduled cargo flights out of the country it was likely the terrorists knew the bombs would be loaded on to passenger planes for at least part of their journey.
Theresa May, the Home Secretary, also admitted it was possible that the US-bound bomb found at East Midlands could have detonated over Britain if it had not been found, because of the unpredictability of freight routes.
In further developments:
* A woman was being hunted in Yemen after posting the bombs, using an identity stolen from a student.
* Investigators in Yemen said they were examining 26 other suspect packages.
* British police faced criticism from the US over their failure to find the East Midlands device during their initial search.
* Downing Street was forced to defend David Cameron’s decision to say nothing about the bomb plot for more than 24 hours.
* The airline pilots’ union said it had been warning for years of cargo being a weak link in air travel that could be exploited by terrorists.
* A former head of security at airport operator BAA, Norman Shanks, said checks on freight were not as stringent than those on passengers.
The two bombs, concealed inside computer printers, were virtually impossible to detect by X-ray screening because they contained an odourless explosive and used timers that would have looked like part of the printers’ electronics.
They were designed to explode in mid-air and would have been as capable of bringing down an aircraft as the device that blew up PanAm Flight 103 over Lockerbie in 1988, killing 270 people.
More than half of all freight to the US is carried on passenger flights and Lord Carlisle of Berriew, the former government adviser on terrorism, said there was every chance a parcel bomb could end up on a passenger plane.
“If you put a parcel into UPS, you have no way of knowing what flight it is going to go on,” he said. “It could end up on a passenger flight.”
One of the bombs went to Dubai via Doha in Qatar on a passenger aircraft. The device that was found at East Midlands airport left the Yemeni capital of Sana’a on a passenger aircraft, which is also thought to have stopped at Doha, before it travelled to Cologne in Germany and Britain in cargo planes.
Mrs May said: “What became clear overnight on Friday and into Saturday was that it was indeed a viable device and could have exploded.
“It could have exploded on the aircraft, and it could have exploded when the aircraft was in mid air. Had that happened it could have brought the aircraft down.”
Mrs May said it was “difficult” to say whether the explosion would have happened over Britain or America. “With these freight flights sometimes the routing can change at the last moment so it is difficult for those who are planning the detonation to know exactly where — if it is detonated to a time, for example — the aircraft will be,” she added
After investigators in Yemen confirmed that they were examining 26 other packages, John Brennan, President Barack Obama’s counter-­terrorism adviser, said “it would be very imprudent … to presume that there are no other [bombs]".
Mr Brennan described the bombs as “sophisticated”, adding: “They were self-contained. They were able to be detonated at a time of the terrorists’ choosing.”
He said the plot “bears the hallmark” of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the terrorist organisation’s Yemeni-based operation, whose leaders include Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born preacher.
The most likely bomb maker is said to be Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri, who made the device used in the foiled Christmas airline attack over Detroit.
The bombs, which were addressed to two synagogues in Chicago, contained the contact details of a 22-year-old computing student, Hannan al-Samawi, who was arrested on Saturday night.
However, investigators released her at the weekend and said they were now seeking another woman who it was thought had posted the devices using Miss al-Samawi’s personal details.
Intelligence that foiled the plot may have come from Jabir Jubran al-Fayfi, a former leading member of AQAP, who surrendered to the Saudi authorities last month.
In light of the plot, the US National Transportation Safety Board is re-examining the wreckage of a UPS cargo jet that crashed in Dubai in September, although sources in Dubai said there was no evidence of an explosion.
American officials expressed concern at the fact that the bomb at East Midlands was discovered only during a second police search.
David Cameron said the Government would “take whatever steps are necessary” to keep British people safe, but Downing Street was forced on to the defensive after the Prime Minister took until 6pm on Saturday – 26 hours after he was first briefed on the incident – to make a public statement.
It was left to Mr Obama, and later Mrs May, to break the news that viable devices had been found. Sources said Mr Cameron “wanted ministers to take the lead”.
Balpa, the pilots’ union, said it had warned for years of the threat from cargo, suggesting that the focus on checking passengers and their luggage “left the door open” for attacks by other means.
Mr Shanks, now an aviation consultant, called for a fundamental review of security.
"We're looking at introducing the explosive detection systems that we currently use for passengers' baggage which goes into the hold," he told the BBC.
"Now this really can't be introduced for every package, but it could be used for packages coming from areas where there is a known risk."http://airforcepundit.blogspot.com/2010/11/ups-cargo-bomb-plot-is-more.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Captain Jarred Fishman, USAFR)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9085796.post-832276728368574158Fri, 29 Oct 2010 14:17:00 +00002010-10-29T10:17:49.054-04:00Air Force gives air bridge 30-day reprieveBy David Sharp - The Associated Press
Posted : Friday Oct 29, 2010 5:38:37 EDT
PORTLAND, Maine — The Air Force has delayed dismantling a National Guard program that provides in-air refueling of military aircraft headed to and from Iraq, Afghanistan and Europe, giving a 30-day reprieve to more than 400 personnel in Maine, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, Sen. Susan Collins said Thursday.
Gen. Raymond Johns, commander of the Air Mobility Command at Scott Air Force Base, Ill., will visit the Maine National Guard’s 101st Air Refueling Wing in Bangor on Nov. 4 as part of an assessment that will determine the future of the so-called air bridge program, said Collins, R-Maine.
The Air Force had notified National Guard and Reserve personnel that they would stand down at month’s end under a budget-cutting directive, but those orders are now being extended until Nov. 30, she said.
Related reading
• Funds low for standby reservists
• Cost reductions could affect vital air bridge
Collins, who sits on the Armed Services Committee, said she hopes the general’s visit will lead to the vast majority of personnel being retained through October 2011.
“I am hopeful that we’re making progress on the vast majority of the jobs, but I recognize that there will be some individuals for whom the active duty order won’t be renewed past Nov. 30,” Collins told The Associated Press after being briefed by the Air Force undersecretary.
The program is called the “air bridge” because it contributes to the flow of military personnel, equipment and materiel that’s needed to support the war in Afghanistan, and continuing operations in Iraq.
For critical flights, military aircraft can continue flying while taking on jet fuel from an aerial tanker as the two aircraft fly in tandem at more than 400 mph. About 1,000 planes in the past year have received fuel in this way under the air bridge program, officials say.
In Bangor, the Maine National Guard’s 101st Air Refueling Wing holds a strategic location as the last U.S. base for outgoing flights and the first for incoming flights. Its KC-135 tankers can reach the primary refueling route over Nova Scotia in just 18 minutes flying time.
The decision to cut the program caused consternation for the program’s supporters because most active-duty refueling tankers are located farther away in the Midwest.
It costs $100 a minute to keep a KC-135 in the air, Collins said, so extra time and travel to reach the refueling zones over the North Atlantic would carry a steep price tag.
Contributing to the uncertainty is the fact that Congress adjourned without approving a budget. The Air Force asked for an extra $378 million, much of which would go to Air Mobility Command; the Senate Appropriations Committee has approved the extra money but the House has not, Collins said.http://airforcepundit.blogspot.com/2010/10/air-force-gives-air-bridge-30-day.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Captain Jarred Fishman, USAFR)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9085796.post-796240818672645156Wed, 27 Oct 2010 16:22:00 +00002010-10-27T12:25:05.534-04:00U.S. operations in Kandahar push out TalibanBy Joshua Partlow and Karin Brulliard
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, October 25, 2010; 9:37 PM
KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN - With 2,000-pound bombs, 12,000 troops, and one illiterate but charismatic Afghan border police commander, the American military has forced insurgents to retreat from key parts of this strategically vital region, according to U.S. and Afghan commanders.
The developments are far from decisive, but senior military leaders believe they have made progress on the western outskirts of Kandahar city and in the pomegranate orchards of the Argandab valley. The ground remains treacherous, seeded with bombs that reverberate daily through the city.
The Taliban departure from some areas could be a strategic response to an operation NATO has trumpeted for months. Or insurgents could be lying low, developing new avenues of attack. NATO forces have cleared villages before, including in Kandahar province, and failed to hold them. Whether insurgents can be kept away this time, or prevented from grabbing new parts of the city or its surroundings, remains to be seen.
The most unexpected, and potentially risky, aspect of NATO's resurgence is Abdul Razziq, the 32-year-old police colonel best known for allegations of pocketing millions of dollars in illegal customs dues, who has left the border to lead hundreds of his militiamen into Taliban-held villages that have bedeviled NATO troops for years.
Behind Razziq's hardened fighters - who possess a local knowledge that police officers and soldiers from Afghanistan's national security forces cannot match - American soldiers have taken back territory previously out of reach. He's led clearing operations in all of the areas central to the American campaign here - Panjwayi, Zhari, Argandab and Kandahar city - and has captured hundreds of Taliban fighters.
"He's like a folk hero now," said Col. Jeffrey Martindale, who commands an American army brigade in Kandahar. "The Taliban fear him."
Afghans who live in these areas, and have witnessed earlier clearing operations give way to Taliban comebacks, often do not share the U.S. military's optimism. And some believe insurgents may be moving into the city to avoid U.S. troops on the periphery. "Security in the city is now drastically worse," said Samsor Afghan, 27, a university student who runs a computer software store downtown, across the street from where a suicide bomber attacked the day before. "The Taliban are everywhere. We don't feel safe even inside the city."
American commanders have nevertheless been buoyed by changes in areas where the bulk of their forces are located. Among the shifts is what they describe as a new assertiveness from Afghan security forces, which now outnumber NATO troops in this operation.
A late-night call
Officers trace the change to one night in mid-August, when Kandahar governor Toryalai Wesa called President Hamid Karzai to report that Taliban forces were blocking a road and searching cars in Malajat, an insurgent stronghold in western Kandahar city.
"Could you, Mr. President, order NATO to come and help us?" Wesa asked, according to an Afghan official present in the palace.
"Shame on you," Karzai replied.
Karzai had recently issued a decree instructing governors to act as the commander of all Afghan security forces in their provinces. He told Wesa to assemble his own force and respond. "Go after them. Don't wait for NATO," he said.
Just hours later, Wesa had cobbled together a few hundred Afghan police, soldiers and intelligence officers, and sent them into Malajat, a move that surprised the Americans in Kandahar. The operation began with Afghan government forces capturing 11 insurgents, but the contingent was soon trapped in a minefield. Five Afghans were killed getting out.
Wesa emerged chastened from the operation, U.S. officials said. For a second run at Malajat, the solution was Razziq. On the border, he developed an outsize reputation - part Robin Hood, part warlord. He was a close ally of the Karzais with thousands of tribal warriors at his command. "If you need a mad dog on a leash, he's not a bad one to have," said a U.S. official in Kandahar.
U.S. troops hastily planned support and coordinated to have Afghan forces ring the neighborhood, while Razziq, cellphone and satellite phone in hand, roared up from the southern desert with a few hundred men. They arrested about 20 suspected insurgents and found scores of explosives.
There was little violence, but U.S. troops noted Razziq's style. At one point his men spotted a stolen Afghan police truck. They fired at it with a rocket-propelled grenade, which deflected off the truck, and exploded in the trees. Suddenly a man in white robes fell from the branches, himself blowing up when his suicide vest hit the ground, which then blew up the truck - a story that Razziq chuckles in recalling, U.S. officials said.
As this partnership has developed, Razziq has been partnered with a U.S. Special Forces commander to help coordinate his moves. He's been called on elsewhere, including particularly treacherous parts of the Argandab valley, where whole villages had been rigged with explosives that had made them impenetrable to previous American units.
The Afghan operations have stunned U.S. troops, accustomed to years of prodding along their reluctant allies. At 3 a.m. on Sept. 15, Capt. Mikel Resnick, a company commander in Argandab, learned that 1,000 Afghan forces were moving into his area. "I don't know if they're going to go burn the orchards down and leave me to clean it up," he said of his initial reaction to the plan.
The Afghans, who took 72 hours to capture 50 detainees, five large bombs and 500 pounds of explosives, required only advice and air support from the Americans, said Lt. Col. Rodger Lemons, the battalion commander at the Argandab district center.
"We basically sat in here and monitored the fight," Resnick said, referring to his outpost at the village of Sarkari Bagh. "They essentially cleared this entire place out."
U.S. military officials acknowledge that it is not ideal to have the border police leading the operation, because the goal is for the Afghan army and police to provide security in their own areas.
"We need to make sure this is not undermining the legitimacy of the Afghan government," said a senior NATO military official in southern Afghanistan.
â??The fight in Kandahar, unlike the previous U.S.-led operation in Marja, has also benefited from a more intensive campaign by U.S. Special Operations forces to hunt down Taliban commanders and bomb-making networks before the infantry push.
The local victims
During the Kandahar operation, Americans have unleashed ferocious air bombardments. In some parts of the Argandab, U.S. troops discovered the Taliban had cleared out whole villages and rigged each house with homemade explosives. In one October operation to clear the way for Razziq's troops, American aircraft dropped about 25 2,000-pound bombs and twice as many 500-pound bombs, while also firing powerful rockets over the ridge from the Kandahar Air Field miles away.
"We obliterated those towns. They're not there at all," Martindale said. "These are just parking lots right now."
Martindale said civilians had long ago fled the Taliban-dominated area, and that the U.S. attacks did not cause civilian casualties - a claim that could not be independently verified.
Faced with the NATO and Afghan push, American commanders believe that many Taliban leaders have retreated to Pakistan, leaving lower-level fighters to stage attacks in Kandahar. Part of this appears to be the normal ebb of fighting in Afghanistan, as insurgents slow their tempo in the colder months.
Afghans living in Zhari and Panjwayi cited many complaints with the current operations, including homes and orchards damaged by American troops, no government support for the people and elusive Taliban guerrillas who dodge the conventional armies.
"Who are the victims of these operations? Just the local people. If the Taliban comes, the people suffer, if the foreign forces come, the people suffer," said Mohammad Rahim, a member of Panjwayi's district council. "The Taliban always leave, and the Taliban always come back."http://airforcepundit.blogspot.com/2010/10/us-operations-in-kandahar-push-out.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Captain Jarred Fishman, USAFR)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9085796.post-6296540239340491573Tue, 26 Oct 2010 18:25:00 +00002010-10-26T14:26:10.161-04:00India, U.S. aim to lift defence ties during Obama tripBy Krittivas Mukherjee
NEW DELHI | Tue Oct 26, 2010 1:59pm IST
NEW DELHI (Reuters) - When U.S. President Barack Obama arrives in India next month, he will face a key challenge of boosting defence ties that are on the upswing but mired by political suspicion over pandering to Washington's interests.
Underlying the visit will be lobbying for billions of dollars in contracts to overhaul India's mostly Russian-supplied military, a relic of their Cold War era partnership.
Those orders include a $11 billion deal for 126 fighter jets that could benefit U.S.' Boeing and Lockheed Martin Corp. France's Dassault, Russia's MiG-35, Sweden's Saab and the Eurofighter Typhoon are also competing.
But Washington faces a host of hurdles, including Indian worries that signing defence pacts which are necessary for the U.S. arms sales to go through may land New Delhi into a wider entanglement with the U.S. military.
While Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has reached out to Washington over his last six years in powers, many within his own Congress party as well as his parliamentary allies are reluctant to embrace these pacts, pending over three years.
"India is weighing to see if all these agreements are to give a wider room to manoeuvre for U.S. forces in the region," said Siddharth Varadarajan, strategic affairs editor at Hindu Newspaper in Delhi.
"There is a mismatch in expectations from the relationship. India wants weapons sales as a transactional relationship, the U.S. is seeking exclusivity in partnership," he said, referring to any U.S. desire to make the Indian military an active element in its strategic expansion in the region.
A KPMG report this month said the misgivings over the pacts were "roadblocks" in sustaining the momentum in the relationship.
Obama's challenge is not as much in winning contracts as it is in lifting ties to a long-term military partnership in a region where Washington is now fighting a war and seeking ways to contain China's rise.
And the defence pacts Washington wants India to sign underscore some of those challenges.
One pact is the Logistics Support Agreement (LSA), which would allow American military to use Indian facilities for operations like refueling. Indians fear India could be used as a launching pad for military operations in the region.
Two other pacts are required under US domestic laws to transfer sensitive defence technology. India fears the military will have to share communications secrets with the United States.
"These agreements need wider consultation. They have various implications," an Indian defence ministry official told Reuters.
DEVELOPING TIES
Once on the opposite sides of the Cold War, India and the United States began warming up to each other about a decade back, the paradigm shift coming with a 2008 civil nuclear deal that then President Bush pushed to end India's nuclear isolation.http://airforcepundit.blogspot.com/2010/10/india-us-aim-to-lift-defence-ties.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Captain Jarred Fishman, USAFR)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9085796.post-7579532091339943817Mon, 25 Oct 2010 19:11:00 +00002010-10-25T15:11:46.275-04:00Karzai Takes Iranian Cash, Just in CaseMax Boot - 10.25.2010 - 10:22 AM Commentary Online Blog
Give Hamid Karzai points for honesty. He has made no attempt to deny a report in the Saturday New York Times that he receives bags of cash from the Iranians. Instead he came right out and admitted it and vowed to continue accepting the cash that he said amounts to about $2 million a year. “They have asked for good relations in return, and for lots of other things in return,” he said of the Iranians. No kidding.
In a way, this should hardly be a shocker. The Iranians have attempted similar dollar diplomacy in Iraq, Lebanon, and lots of other countries. No surprise that they should try the same thing with another neighbor. Nor should anyone be particularly shocked that the Iranians appear to be playing both sides of the street — giving both to Karzai and to the Taliban. In a way, what the Iranians are doing, while undoubtedly cynical, is not that far removed from conventional foreign-aid programs run by the U.S., Britain, and other powers that also seek to curry influence with their donations. Even the Iranian resort to cash — which is more than a bit seedy — is hardly all that different from what the U.S. does. The CIA, in particular, is known for handing out suitcases stuffed full of bills to our allies, including Karzai. I am more concerned about lethal aid that the Iranians provide to insurgents in places like Iraq and Afghanistan that is used to kill American troops — aid that has been highlighted once again by WikiLeaks.
These cash payments hardly mean that Karzai is a dupe of Iran. He gets much more money and support from the U.S. than from the Iranians, and he knows that. He is, like most politicians, primarily looking out for numero uno and that means ensuring that he is not entirely reliant on a single ally that has proved fickle in the past.
This should, however, alert us to the geopolitical stakes in Afghanistan. If we leave prematurely, Afghanistan will once again be the scene of a massive civil war, with neighboring states, and in particular Pakistan and Iran, doing their utmost to exert their influence to the detriment of our long-term interests. That is yet one more reason why it is important to prevail in Afghanistanhttp://airforcepundit.blogspot.com/2010/10/karzai-takes-iranian-cash-just-in-case.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Captain Jarred Fishman, USAFR)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9085796.post-3065661635907104307Thu, 21 Oct 2010 14:18:00 +00002010-10-21T10:22:07.175-04:00Afghan capital enjoys relative calm amid security crackdownMuhammed Rasoul, manager of the Kabul City Centre Mall, stands in front of the building on October 14, 2010. | Dion Nissenbaum/MCT
By Hashim Shukoor and Dion Nissenbaum | McClatchy Newspapers
KABUL, Afghanistan — Muhammad Rasoul was heading to work last February when a powerful explosion rocked his car and sent dust through the quiet, early morning Kabul streets.
Within minutes, it became clear that a powerful car bomb had ravaged Kabul's first modern indoor mall — where Rasoul works as the manager — killing 17 people and putting the Afghan capital on edge again.
It took Rasoul and his colleagues two months and $4 million to get the $35 million Kabul City Centre mall and adjacent four-star Safi Landmark hotel back in full operation last spring.
These days, however, as workers construct an ugly steel security entryway for the mall, Rasoul worries less about another attack.
"We are building this door for security," Rasoul said while standing next to the new barrier, "but security has gotten better."
While insurgent violence has expanded steadily throughout the country, the capital has remained relatively quiet since that attack. The last major assault was in May, when a suicide bomber drove into a small military convoy in Kabul, killing 18 people, including four high-ranking NATO officers.
The U.S. military and Afghan security officials said they'd killed or captured hundreds of would-be assailants around Kabul this year, significantly blunting the effectiveness of insurgent forces looking to target the capital.
"Our capacity in Kabul is much better," said Abdul Manan Farahi, a special adviser in the Interior Ministry who served for more than four years as the head of the counter-terrorism unit. "Our focus now — the government focus — is on security for Kabul."
Nestled in a high-altitude valley below the Hindu Kush mountains and with some 4 million inhabitants, Kabul has remained largely insulated from the worst violence over the past decade.
The capital is akin to the crown jewel in the counterinsurgency strategy of Army Gen. David Petraeus, the U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, who drafted the new doctrine focusing on protecting populations from insurgent attacks and instability.
Relative calm in the capital is one of the key signs of success that Petraeus is touting as progress in the nine-year-old war.
The capture of two U.S. sailors outside Kabul last June was one unexpected catalyst for the improved security. The intense search for the two, whom insurgents killed within days, churned up a number of significant leads.
"A lot of stuff was coming actively and very heavily at that time," said a Western intelligence official, who received permission to discuss Kabul security only on the condition of anonymity. "We've been going after them aggressively since July."
While Afghan forces are responsible for Kabul security, U.S. Special Operations Forces have been quietly supporting them by staging operations in the capital. From April through October, according to figures from the American military, special forces killed 13 people and detained six.
Most of the big attacks to hit Kabul have been the work of the Haqqani network, a Taliban ally based in Pakistan's North Waziristan region that has ties to Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence spy agency.
This year, the U.S-led military coalition has focused more attention on the Haqqani forces. American forces said they'd killed 115 Haqqani members and captured 250 more from June to August. In September, U.S. officials said, they killed or captured more than 100 Haqqani and Taliban leaders.
Rangin Dadfar Spanta, Afghanistan's national security adviser, told McClatchy that military operations around Kabul and in Haqqani's border sanctuaries in Pakistan had disrupted the network's operation.
"The number of commanders that they have lost is significant," Spanta said.
Afghan officials have tripled the number of police officers who guard Kabul and have expanded the so-called "Ring of Steel" checkpoints at key entrances to the city's power centers.
Afghan and U.S. officials say they're doing better at sharing intelligence, which allowed them to thwart attempts to attack an international donors' conference in July, as well as track down insurgents responsible for an embarrassing mortar attack on the capital's closely watched peace conference in June.
The Afghan police force that's responsible for Kabul has jumped from 5,000 officers to 18,000, and the Afghan army has established a new division with 7,000 soldiers to help protect the capital.
The U.S. has demanded repeatedly that Pakistan rein in the Afghan insurgents it covertly supports, but American and Afghan intelligence officials said there were few signs of restraint.
Spanta and other Afghan government leaders called for still more U.S. pressure on Pakistan to crack down on Haqqani operatives and Taliban leaders who orchestrate attacks on Afghanistan from their border sanctuaries.
"This is other evidence for my central thesis: We have to fight the source," Spanta said.
Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/10/20/102338/afghan-capital-enjoys-relative.html#ixzz130FaJ5y2http://airforcepundit.blogspot.com/2010/10/afghan-capital-enjoys-relative-calm.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Captain Jarred Fishman, USAFR)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9085796.post-437868306337281153Wed, 20 Oct 2010 14:13:00 +00002010-10-20T10:14:01.945-04:00Taliban Elite, Aided by NATO, Join Talks for Afghan PeaceBy DEXTER FILKINS New York Times
KABUL, Afghanistan — Talks to end the war in Afghanistan involve extensive, face-to-face discussions with Taliban commanders from the highest levels of the group’s leadership, who are secretly leaving their sanctuaries in Pakistan with the help of NATO troops, officials here say.
The discussions, some of which have taken place in Kabul, are unfolding between the inner circle of President Hamid Karzai and members of the Quetta shura, the leadership group that oversees the Taliban war effort inside Afghanistan. Afghan leaders have also held discussions with leaders of the Haqqani network, considered to be one of the most hard-line guerrilla factions fighting here; and members of the Peshawar shura, whose fighters are based in eastern Afghanistan.
The Taliban leaders coming into Afghanistan for talks have left their havens in Pakistan on the explicit assurance that they will not be attacked or arrested by NATO forces, Afghans familiar with the talks say. Many top Taliban leaders reside in Pakistan, where they are believed to enjoy at least some official protection.
In at least one case, Taliban leaders crossed the border and boarded a NATO aircraft bound for Kabul, according to an Afghan with knowledge of the talks. In other cases, NATO troops have secured roads to allow Taliban officials to reach Afghan- and NATO-controlled areas so they can take part in discussions. Most of the discussions have taken place outside of Kabul, according to the Afghan official.
American officials said last week that talks between Afghan and Taliban leaders were under way. But the ranks of the insurgents, the fact that they represent multiple factions, and the extent of NATO efforts to provide transportation and security to adversaries they otherwise try to kill or capture have not been previously disclosed.
At least four Taliban leaders, three of them members of the Quetta shura and one of them a member of the Haqqani family, have taken part in discussions, according to the Afghan official and a former diplomat in the region.
The identities of the Taliban leaders are being withheld by The New York Times at the request of the White House and an Afghan who has taken part in the discussions. The Afghan official said that identifying the men could result in their deaths or detention at the hands of rival Taliban commanders or the Pakistani intelligence agents who support them.
The discussions are still described as preliminary, partly because Afghan and American officials are trying to determine how much influence the Taliban leaders who have participated in the talks have within their own organizations.
Even so, the talks have been held on several different occasions and appear to represent the most substantive effort to date to negotiate an end to the nine-year-old war, which began with an American-led campaign to overthrow the Taliban after the 9/11 attacks. “These are face-to-face discussions,” said an Afghan with knowledge of the talks. “This is not about making the Americans happy or making Karzai happy. It’s about what is in the best interests of the Afghan people.”
“These talks are based on personal relationships,” the official said. “When the Taliban see that they can travel in the country without being attacked by the Americans, they see that the government is sovereign, that they can trust us.”
The discussions appear to be unfolding without the approval of Pakistan’s leaders, who are believed to exercise a wide degree of control over the Taliban’s leadership. The Afghan government seems to be trying to seek a reconciliation agreement that does not directly involve Pakistan, which Mr. Karzai’s government fears will exercise too much influence over Afghanistan after NATO forces withdraw.
But that strategy could backfire by provoking the Pakistanis, who could undermine any agreement.
Mullah Muhammad Omar, the overall leader of the Taliban, is explicitly being cut out of the negotiations, in part because of his closeness to the Pakistani security services, officials said.
Afghans who have tried to take part in, or even facilitate, past negotiations have been killed by their Taliban comrades, sometimes with the assistance of Pakistan’s intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI.
“The ISI will try to prevent these negotiations from happening,” the Afghan official said. “The ISI will just eliminate them,” he said, referring to the people who take part.
Earlier this year, the ISI detained as many as 23 Taliban leaders residing in Pakistan after the intelligence service discovered that the Taliban leaders were talking secretly with representatives of the Afghan government.
Cutting Mullah Omar out of the negotiations appears to represent an attempt by Afghan leaders to drive a wedge into the upper ranks of the Taliban leadership. Though there is some disagreement among Afghan officials, many regard Mullah Omar as essentially a prisoner of the Pakistani security establishment who would be unable to exercise any independence.
Some American and Afghan officials believe that the Taliban is vulnerable to being split, with potentially large chunks of the movement defecting to the Afghan government.
The Haqqani group is the namesake of Jalalhuddin Haqqani, a former minister in the Taliban government in the 1990s who presides over a Mafia-like organization based in North Waziristan, in the tribal areas of Pakistan. The Haqqani network has sheltered several members of Al Qaeda and maintains close links to Pakistan’s security services.
The group is believed to be responsible for many suicide attacks inside Kabul that have killed hundreds of civilians. Earlier this year, Gen. David H. Petraeus, the commander of NATO forces here, asked the Obama administration to declare the Haqqani network a terrorist organization. That has not happened.
Indeed, the endorsement of such talks presents the Americans with a paradox. Many if not most of the leaders of the Taliban and the Haqqani group are targets for death or capture. Many of the same individuals are also on the United Nations “black list,” which obliges governments to freeze their assets and prevent them from traveling.
Waheed Omar, a spokesman for President Karzai, acknowledged that the government was in contact with a range of Taliban leaders, but he declined to discuss any details. “I cannot confirm that there have been discussions with the Quetta shura,” he said.
The Taliban leadership and those in their immediate circle appear to be in the dark as well. A Pakistani cleric close to the Quetta shura and the Haqqani leadership said in an interview that he was unaware of any face-to-face discussions with Afghan leaders. But he said the Afghan government had recently sent out feelers to several Taliban commanders, with the proviso that Mullah Omar be left out.
“The problem is, they want to exclude Mullah Omar,” the cleric said. “If you exclude him, then there cannot be any talks at all.”
The Pakistani cleric said that some discussions among members of the Quetta shura may have taken place recently in Saudi Arabia, where many of the group’s leaders had traveled during the holy month of Ramadan.
One Pakistani security official said he was aware of talks involving a member of the Quetta shura. But he said those discussions would likely come to nothing, because the Taliban leader did not any have official endorsement.
“He’s useless,” the Pakistani security officer said of the Taliban leader. “This guy is not in a position to make a deal.”
For their part, American officials say they are wary of investing too much hope in the discussions. In the past, talks — or, more accurately, talks about talks — have foundered over preconditions that each side has set: for the Taliban, that the Americans must first withdraw; for the Afghan government, that the Taliban must first disarm.
Perhaps the biggest complication lies on the battlefield. As long as the Taliban believe they are winning, they do not seem likely to want to make a deal. In recent months, as the additional troops and resources ordered up by President Obama have poured in, the American military has stepped up operations against Taliban strongholds.
So far, the insurgents have shown few public signs of wanting to give up. That much was acknowledged Tuesday by the C.I.A. director, Leon E. Panetta.
“If there are elements that wish to reconcile and get reintegrated, that ought to be obviously explored,” he said in Washington. “But I still have not seen anything that indicates that at this point a serious effort is being made to reconcile.”http://airforcepundit.blogspot.com/2010/10/taliban-elite-aided-by-nato-join-talks.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Captain Jarred Fishman, USAFR)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9085796.post-7450420118669875390Tue, 19 Oct 2010 13:08:00 +00002010-10-19T09:08:51.138-04:00Post: How Obama sabotaged Middle East peace talksJackson Diehl, Washington Post October 19 For 15 years and more, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas conducted peace talks with Israel in the absence of a freeze on Jewish settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Now, it appears as likely as not that his newborn negotiations with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu -- and their goal of agreement on a Palestinian state within a year -- will die because of Abbas's refusal to continue without such a freeze.
The Palestinian president's stand has frustrated a lot of people -- including his own prime minister, Salaam Fayyad, and the president of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak, both of whom have said that the settlement issue should not be an obstacle to the negotiations. At a recent dinner in Washington, Fayyad pointed out that any building in the settlements during the next year would have no effect on the outcome of the talks or the future Palestinian state.
So why does Abbas stubbornly persist in his self-defeating position? In an interview with Israeli television Sunday night, he offered a remarkably candid explanation: "When Obama came to power, he is the one who announced that settlement activity must be stopped," he said. "If America says it and Europe says it and the whole world says it, you want me not to say it?"
The statement confirmed something that many Mideast watchers have suspected for a long time: that the settlement impasse originated not with Netanyahu or Abbas, but with Obama -- who by insisting on an Israeli freeze has created a near-insuperable obstacle to the peace process he is trying to promote.
A standoff between Obama and Netanyahu over settlements paralyzed Middle East diplomacy for more than a year, while Abbas happily watched from the sidelines. Netanyahu finally announced a 10-month, partial moratorium on new settlement construction. In July, following a meeting at the White House, it looked like the U.S. and Israeli leaders had overcome their differences. Obama said nothing about settlements afterward, and instead urged Abbas to begin direct talks with Netanyahu.
Yet to the surprise of both Netanyahu and some in his own administration, Obama reintroduced the settlement issue. First in a press conference and then in his September address to the UN General Assembly, he called on the Israeli government to extend the settlement moratorium, which expired on Sept. 26. In doing so, he made it impossible for Abbas not to make the same demand.
In his television interview, Abbas said that Netanyahu had told him that he could not extend the settlement moratorium without causing his right-wing government to collapse. So both leaders are trapped. Netanyahu is a hostage to his cabinet; and Abbas is the prisoner of Obama's misguided rhetoric.http://airforcepundit.blogspot.com/2010/10/post-how-obama-sabotaged-middle-east.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Captain Jarred Fishman, USAFR)15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9085796.post-1021107037422226027Mon, 18 Oct 2010 12:30:00 +00002010-10-18T08:31:22.255-04:00Pentagon bracing for new WikiLeaks releaseBy Olivia Hampton (AFP) – 5 hours ago
WASHINGTON — The Pentagon scoured through an Iraq war database Monday to prepare for potential fallout from an expected release by WikiLeaks of some 400,000 secret military reports.
The massive release, possibly early this week, is set to dwarf the whistleblower website's publication of 77,000 classified US military documents on the war in Afghanistan in July, including the names of Afghan informants and other details from raw intelligence reports. Another 15,000 are due out soon.
In order to prepare for the anticipated release of sensitive intelligence on the US-led Iraq war, officials set up a 120-person taskforce several weeks ago to comb through the database and "determine what the possible impacts might be," said Colonel David Lapan, a Pentagon spokesman.
The Department of Defense is concerned the leak compiles "significant activities" from the war, which include incidents such as known attacks against coalition troops, Iraqi security forces, civilians or infrastructure in the country.
The data was culled from an Iraq-based database that contained "significant acts, unit-level reporting, tactical reports, things of that nature," said Lapan, noting that Pentagon officials still do not know how many and which documents would be released.
He urged WikiLeaks to return the documents to the US military, which he said found no need to redact them in the interim.
"Our position is redactions don't help, it's returning the documents to their rightful owner," Lapan said.
"We don't believe WikiLeaks or others have the expertise needed. It's not as simple as just taking out names. There are other things and documents that aren't names that are also potentially damaging."
For the Iraq leak, Wikileaks is believed to be teaming up with the same news outlets as it did for the Afghanistan document dump -- The New York Times, Britain's Guardian and Der Spiegel of Germany -- and Newsweek magazine has reported that all partners would release the material simultaneously.
The July release caused uproar in the US government, with director of National Intelligence James Clapper and former CIA director Michael Hayden warning it could undermine the post-9/11 effort to break down walls between rival intelligence agencies.
Difficulties in sharing intelligence information have been repeatedly identified as a problem plaguing spy and law enforcement services since the attacks of September 11, 2001.
In a speech this month, Clapper said President Barack Obama was full of "angst" over a "hemorrhage" of leaks of sensitive intelligence from government officials.
"I think it's going to have a very chilling effect on the need to share," he said.
WikiLeaks has not identified the source of the documents it has released so far but suspicion has fallen on Bradley Manning, a US Army intelligence analyst who is in military custody.
Manning was arrested in May following the release by WikiLeaks of video footage of a US Apache helicopter strike in Iraq in which civilians died, and he has been charged with delivering defense information to an unauthorized source.
Launched in 2006, WikiLeaks is facing internal troubles amid criticism its releases harm US national security and an ongoing investigation into its founder, Julian Assange, over an alleged sex crime in Sweden.
It also has some money problems.
Assange told The Guardian that British firm Moneybookers, an online payment company it uses to collect donations, closed his website's account in August after the US and Australian governments blacklisted WikiLeaks in the days following the initial release of Afghan documents.
The website has been undergoing "scheduled maintenance" since September 29, but promises to "be back online as soon as possible."http://airforcepundit.blogspot.com/2010/10/pentagon-bracing-for-new-wikileaks.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Captain Jarred Fishman, USAFR)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9085796.post-8459240129027340852Wed, 13 Oct 2010 14:53:00 +00002010-10-13T10:53:36.233-04:00U.S. and Vietnam Build Ties With an Eye on ChinaBy SETH MYDANS
HANOI, Vietnam — A visit to Vietnam this week by Robert M. Gates, the United States defense secretary, is just the latest step in a bilateral relationship that is at its warmest since diplomatic ties were established 15 years ago.
A steady progression of careful gestures has eroded the enmities of the Vietnam War, built a basis of increasing trust and turned the two nations’ attention, in large part, from issues of the past to the present.
It is the second American cabinet-level visit to Vietnam in four months; Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton came in July. Exchanges at this level have become almost common, if not routine.
Mr. Gates was here for a gathering of defense chiefs from the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations and partner countries.
“I would say that relations are at their highest point in 15 years,” said Hung M. Nguyen, director of the Indochina Institute at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va. “We have basically removed the major hurdles of suspicion in military-to-military relations, and I would expect things to proceed quite fast,” he said.
The main concern shared by the two nations underscores the shifts in alliances in the 35 years since the war came to an end: Chinese claims in the South China Sea.
It is an issue with some historical paradox. While the United States sought during the war to contain an expansion of Chinese Communism into Vietnam, it is aligned with Vietnam today in concern over an escalation of China’s maritime claims.
China was an ally of North Vietnam in its war against South Vietnam and the United States in the 1960s and ’70s and is now a partner of a unified Vietnam in an uneasy relationship between Communist nations of vastly different size.
“Vietnam worries about Chinese in the South China Sea, and America worries about interference in freedom of navigation,” Dr. Hung said. “Because of this, the strategic interests of Vietnam and the United States converge.”
On Tuesday, Vietnam announced that China had released a Vietnamese fishing boat and crew it had seized near the disputed Paracel Islands a month ago, ending the latest flare-up between the nations. China earlier said that the crew must pay a fine, and Vietnam said that the crew members had been mistreated.
By Vietnam’s count, 63 fishing boats with 725 crew members have been seized since 2005 in areas claimed by China.
In March, China raised the level of its territorial claim, asserting that the South China Sea was a “core concern,” a phrase that placed it on a par with Taiwan and Tibet, its most politically contentious territorial interests.
In response, during a visit to Hanoi in July, Mrs. Clinton hardened Washington’s stance by saying the United States had a “national interest” in freedom of navigation in the area.
In balancing its relations between the two major powers, Vietnam has been at pains to reassure China, the giant on its doorstep, that it would have no alliances, military bases or military coalitions that threatened China.
While Vietnam marked the 15th anniversary of diplomatic ties with the United States this year, it also celebrated a much longer diplomatic relationship of 60 years with China.
Hanoi’s warming toward Washington has also been slowed by suspicions of American motives and commitment to a Vietnam policy, analysts said.
They said Washington’s relations with Vietnam had always been part of larger international interests and could shift as those interests changed.
Once again, as it was during the war, America’s stance toward Vietnam is one piece in a broader China policy.
Toeing a careful line, Vietnam insists that its policies toward the two nations are independent of each other.
“You should not look at Vietnam’s relationship with the United States through the prism of China,” said Nguyen Nam Duong, a research fellow at the Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam, a branch of the Foreign Ministry.
“Vietnam will have independent relations with both the United States and China, and we want to separate those relations from each other,” he said in an interview on Tuesday.
Quite apart from their relations with China, the two former wartime enemies have grown steadily closer. Trade relations were normalized in 2006. Port calls by United States naval vessels have become more frequent since the first one in 2003.
“It’s a very deliberate pace that’s being kept here,” said Carlyle Thayer, an expert on Vietnam at the Australian Defense Force Academy at the University of New South Wales in Sydney.
“Neither side wants to be used by the other, but both want to advance the relationship,” he said.
Mrs. Clinton took an exuberant tone last month when she said, “The progress between Vietnam and the United States has been breathtaking.”
Vietnamese officials have been less effusive, but they seem to agree.
“Vietnam and the United States are enjoying an excellent period of bilateral relations,” the Vietnamese ambassador to the United States, Le Cong Phung, said in remarks quoted by the official Vietnam News Agency last month.
However, warming relations have been slowed by American concerns over human rights abuses in Vietnam and by Hanoi’s suspicion that Washington is using the issue to undermine the Communist government.
The Vietnamese often use the phrases “peaceful evolution” and the “color revolutions,” expressions that refer to their view that the collapse of the Soviet Union and other European Communist governments was brought about at least partly by outside support for democracy and human rights.
The competing concerns involving human rights renew themselves in something of a vicious circle. Vietnam’s fear of American motives leads to the arrests of dissidents it sees as connected with the West. And those arrests in turn intensify concerns of the United States over human rights abuses.
The two nations’ alignment on the issue of the South China Sea illustrates the emergence of a more forward-looking relationship, said Kim Ninh, the country representative in Vietnam for The Asia Foundation, which is based in San Francisco.
For the United States, the chief issue from the past continues to be a full accounting for military service members still missing from the war, though that concern no longer carries the power that it once did.
For Vietnam, the chief remaining postwar issue is a demand for greater American assistance in addressing the effects of Agent Orange, a chemical defoliant that was sprayed in parts of the country, causing widespread birth defects.
Mr. Duong of the Foreign Ministry said these postwar issues remained “very relevant.”
“In terms of defense relations, we still need to settle the issues of the past so as to build trust to move toward the future,” he said.
But he said that bilateral relations “have never been better” and that “they can only go upward. They cannot go downward.”http://airforcepundit.blogspot.com/2010/10/us-and-vietnam-build-ties-with-eye-on.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Captain Jarred Fishman, USAFR)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9085796.post-3700672578069637284Tue, 12 Oct 2010 13:19:00 +00002010-10-12T09:19:48.310-04:00Payoff seen in Afghan surgeTaliban demoralized and changing sides, military says
RESCUE READY: Air Force Pararescueman Alejandro Serrano with the 46th Expeditionary Rescue Squadron test-fires his weapon over Kandahar province in case it's needed during casualty-pickup missions in Afghanistan.
The U.S. military is starting to see signs that the troop surge in Afghanistan is working on a timetable similar to the Iraq reinforcement campaign in 2007, according to an outside adviser and military sources.
"There are already some early signs of a beginning of a momentum shift in our favor," retired Army Gen. Jack Keane told The Washington Times.
Gen. Keane just returned from a two-week tour of the battlefield, where the focus is on ousting the Taliban from Kandahar, its birthplace, as well as from Helmand province and other southern and eastern areas.
Gen. Keane reported his findings to Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Kabul, who saw the surge of 30,000 troops completed in August, placing about 100,000 American service members in country.
An architect of the Bush administration's surge of troops in Iraq, Gen. Keane advised Gen. Petraeus when he was the top commander there.
Gen. Keane told The Times he has witnessed in Afghanistan the same shift in fortunes: Taliban fighters are changing sides, villages are being cleansed of the enemy and protected, and intercepted communications show flagging Taliban morale.
"Overall, we can see now that the surge forces are starting to make a difference," he said. "And you have to be encouraged by some of the progress that's being made. All that said, we're in a tough fight, and I believe we will continue to gain momentum."
Gen. Keane offered two observations as evidence. First, most commanders with whom he spoke said they are encountering Taliban who want to stop fighting and reintegrate into Afghan society. "That's a big deal," he said.
Second, "There's evidence of erosion of some of the will of the Taliban. We pick it up in interrogations, and we also pick it up listening to their radio traffic and telephone calls in terms of the morale problems they're starting to have," Gen. Keane said.
A military officer in the U.S. who monitors the war confirmed that Taliban radio chatter sounds a bit frantic.
"The Taliban are not anxious to engage us, because we come after them once they start shooting at us," the officer told The Times on the condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the press. "One of the translations I saw came out as 'Marines are insane.' So, maybe that means that little by little things are getting better."
Gen. Keane said the drop in Taliban morale can be traced to soldiers and Marines going after hillside hamlets and safe havens. The Taliban has thrived in such areas, where they regroup, plan raids and store ammunition.
"What is happening is, the Taliban's freedom of movement," he said. "We are literally taking away from them things they are used to. We are denying them some of the safe havens that they have in the south. We are denying them the support zones they've been operating out of with impunity.
"Support zones are up in the mountains, where they use villagers to help hide their weapons caches. Safe havens are up there, too, usually away from everybody, and we are denying them the use of those. We are interdicting and disrupting their operating areas, which had a tendency to focus on the roads quite a bit, and we're interdicting what they're doing there."
Gen. Petraeus is on a schedule to show positive results by July 2011, when President Obama's war strategy calls for the beginning of a troop exit.
The four-star general's job may have gotten tougher last week, when James L. Jones, a retired four-star Marine Corps general, quit as Mr. Obama's national security adviser. He will be succeeded by Thomas Donilon, a Democratic Party operative and lawyer who served as Gen. Jones' deputy and who opposed more troops for Afghanistan, which puts him at odds with Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates.
In a recent NPR interview, Gen. Petraeus cited the Malajat district in Kandahar city as an area infested with Taliban but now controlled by U.S. and Afghan forces.
"A month ago, it was a sanctuary for certain elements of the Taliban who were carrying out assassinations, intimidation activities, extortion and a variety of other illicit acts," he said. "They largely controlled it. That Malajat district was [one] in which the Taliban had freedom of movement, freedom of access, and again, considerable influence in that area."
Maj. Gen. Richard Mills, the top Marine in Afghanistan, who is focused on retaking Helmand, has been guarded about war progress. But last week at a change-of-command ceremony, he declared, according to press reports: "We're hurting the enemy, and we're hurting him badly. For every casualty we suffer, the enemy suffers numerous casualties."
Stephen Biddle, a Council on Foreign Relations analyst who advises the command in Afghanistan, like Gen. Keane, has seen territorial gains.
"There are places that had been deeply Taliban-held that are now certainly contested and in some places increasingly government-controlled, like the central Helmand River Valley for example," he said on the council's website. "This may happen increasingly over coming weeks and months in previously dangerous parts of Kandahar province, where progress has not been as fast as many had hoped."
Mr. Biddle said the Obama administration made a mistake in calling out Afghan President Hamid Karzai publicly for rampant corruption, which embarrassed him in front of his people and forced him to lash out at Washington.
Now, the U.S. command and State Department have embarked on a "bottom-up" strategy to try to root out corruption network by network, he said.
There are still plenty of skeptics, given the rampant government corruption, Pakistan's inability to stop the Taliban from infiltrating Afghanistan, and the mixed loyalties of Afghan police and army. The Taliban issued a statement last week on the war's ninth anniversary claiming they control 75 percent of Afghanistan.
Robert Maginnis, a military analyst and Army consultant, said "big problems" exist. Mr. Obama's 2009 Afghan strategy put new emphasis on Pakistan-U.S. cooperation in defeating the Taliban. Yet, elements of Islamabad's intelligence service are still helping the Taliban, according to a London School of Economics study.
"Pakistan is not helping our efforts, and Obama made Islamabad a major part of the solution," he said. "Part of the problem with Pakistan is the major distraction created by the floods, but also because the civilian government is utterly incompetent."
Mr. Maginnis also said that if Mr. Obama insists on the July 2011 deadline, it will result in the Taliban simply returning from Pakistan to retake villages and cities.
"We may spend more blood and treasure in the counterinsurgency, but next summer there will be little to show for the investment other than a few population centers enjoying some security but little governance and an economy," he said.
Still, Gen. Keane said he sees Marines and soldiers methodically taking territory once controlled by the Taliban.
"We've made significant progress in Helmand province," he said. "The Marines will continue to make progress as they push farther north, as well. The effort in the south, in Kandahar, is just beginning."http://airforcepundit.blogspot.com/2010/10/payoff-seen-in-afghan-surge.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Captain Jarred Fishman, USAFR)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9085796.post-3432722282404730050Mon, 11 Oct 2010 13:19:00 +00002010-10-11T09:19:37.171-04:00In Vietnam, Gates to Discuss Maritime Claims of ChinaBy THOM SHANKER
HANOI, Vietnam — Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates landed Sunday in Vietnam, where the narrative of a past war with the United States has faded as the leadership here openly seeks American support to counter an increasingly assertive China.
Shared Concern About China Aligns U.S. and Vietnam (October 11, 2010)
As Hanoi Marks 1,000th Birthday, Some Are Cynical (October 10, 2010) Mr. Gates has scheduled private talks with his Vietnamese counterpart during a conference of defense ministers from across the region, where a key issue will be how to manage China’s expanded claims of maritime rights in the South China Sea. China has backed those claims with threats of economic retaliation against some nations in the region.
A senior Defense Department official traveling aboard Mr. Gates’s airplane to Hanoi said the defense ministers from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations would look for common ground on the issues of counterterrorism, peacekeeping and, with China in attendance, a response to Beijing’s push for increased sovereignty over international waters.
Mr. Gates faces a delicate balancing act. He must reassure Asian partners and allies that the United States will remain engaged in the region and will work for a peaceful resolution of the competing claims over islands, undersea mineral wealth and fishing rights. But he must do so without jeopardizing his equally important efforts to restore a healthy military-to-military dialogue with China.
China and the United States have already sparred over China’s claims in the South China Sea, with the United States allied with Vietnam on the issue. In March, at least one senior Chinese official raised the level of its claim, asserting to two senior White House officials visiting Beijing that the South China Sea was a “core interest,” a phrase that placed it on a par with Taiwan and Tibet, which China considers parts of its territory.
In Hanoi in July, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton hardened Washington’s stance by saying the United States had a “national interest” in freedom of navigation in the area.
The defense secretary’s expected arguments to China are clear: Beijing’s dash to become a global economic power requires it to honor accepted standards for sharing oceans and airspace, and harassment of ships and airplanes in international lanes off its shores will harm China’s long-term interests.
China is expected to invite Mr. Gates to Beijing, a significant change in tone. China froze military relations with the United States this year when the Obama administration announced $6.4 billion in arms sales to Taiwan.
Mr. Gates arrived in Vietnam 15 years after normalization of relations between the two countries, but the streets were overflowing with revelers for another celebration, the 1,000th anniversary of the founding of Hanoi. China and Vietnam have a long history of bloody competition, one that was buried for the years that China backed North Vietnam in pushing back American military involvement here.
Vietnam’s worries over Chinese encroachment were reflected in its recent choices for weapons purchases. Last year, Vietnam signed deals with Russia to buy six Kilo-class diesel-powered hunter-killer submarines for $1.8 billion and eight Sukhoi jet fighters for another $500 million, according to the Congressional Research Service. Both weapons are designed for protecting territorial waters and airspace, and the deals also illustrate Russia’s support of nations trying to curb China’s power.
The United States, while seeking to improve diplomatic and military relations with Vietnam, has offered little in the way of arms, mostly focusing its assistance on military training and officer education. Washington has continuing human rights concerns with Vietnam, mostly about ensuring freedom of religion here.http://airforcepundit.blogspot.com/2010/10/in-vietnam-gates-to-discuss-maritime.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Captain Jarred Fishman, USAFR)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9085796.post-8520002401390841820Wed, 06 Oct 2010 15:06:00 +00002010-10-06T11:06:48.610-04:00Pentagon pitches austerity plan to nervous Wall StreetTue, Oct 5 2010
By Andrea Shalal-Esa
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn met with over a dozen Wall Street analysts last week to map out Pentagon cost-cutting plans aimed at averting a collapse in defense spending the likes of which was seen at the end of the Cold War.
Lynn tried to assure the analysts that the Defense Department could continue to fund its biggest weapons purchases and still meet personnel costs by trimming $100 billion over five years from overhead and low priority programs, according to accounts of the meeting obtained by Reuters.
The Pentagon confirmed the meeting took place, but gave no details.
Investors remain worried and industry executives are already scrambling to find other revenues to offset the expected contraction in military demand.
"Nobody on Wall Street believes that defense spending will remain stable. The country is running a budget deficit of $1 billion every six hours, and defense will have to be part of the solution," said analyst Loren Thompson of the Virginia-based Lexington Institute.
He said Pentagon officials were losing credibility because they were not facing up to that budget reality, and had not yet drafted policies to deal with the coming downturn and the wave of consolidations already hitting the sector.
Analysts at the meeting were sworn to secrecy, but sources familiar with the proceedings said Lynn faced tough questions about future profit margins and the Pentagon's ability to maintain a choice of suppliers given decreased demand for weapons.
Lynn, a former executive with Raytheon Co, responded, according to these accounts, that the Pentagon funds most research and development programs -- in contrast to the commercial sector -- pays its bill faster, and still offers companies profit margins around 12 percent.
Joseph Nadol of JP Morgan cited current modest valuations and poor performance of defense shares in a note on Tuesday, saying the stocks "will have a difficult time outperforming the broader market in the coming years."
The Standard & Poor's Aerospace and Defense Index has risen 6 percent this year but is off 25 percent from an all-time high reached in October 2007.
While there could be some trading rallies, and prices could rise somewhat if the Pentagon's fiscal 2012 budget guidance was "mediocre but not disastrous," Nadol said his firm's estimates were generally declining.
NOT MUCH UPSIDE
Nadol and other analysts say the bad news is already factored into defense stocks, which should give them some resilience. But they don't see much upside either, given the overall economic outlook and growing concern about deficits.
Friday's closed-door meeting in New York was the latest of a series of outreach meetings with industry, lawmakers and investors that have been hosted by Lynn, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, and chief weapons buyer, Ashton Carter.
The meetings stand in stark contrast to the tenure of Gates' predecessor, Donald Rumsfeld, who refused to meet with industry executives on principle.
Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said the meetings were part of a larger outreach effort to change the culture of the Defense Department and not some new lobbying campaign to "woo or win over industry investors."
"It is in our interest for there to be a healthy industrial base in this country," he said. "But we don't do investor relations here. That's not our responsibility."
Defense consultant Jim McAleese said the frequency of the meetings, and the involvement of the most senior Pentagon officials showed that they "do realize that the threat to defense funding is both credible, imminent and quantifiable."
Rob Stallard with RBC Capital Markets Corp said Gates' personal engagement had helped him cancel some programs long propped up by Congress, including the Lockheed Martin Corp F-22 fighter. "It's a sign that Gates means business."
But Stallard said Congress would still likely defy a veto threat and continue funding the Pentagon's current target for cuts -- a second F-35 engine built by General Electric and Britain's Rolls Royce.
Gates' plans to retire next year could also make it difficult to sustain the reforms and stave off bigger cuts to the budget in coming years, analysts say.http://airforcepundit.blogspot.com/2010/10/pentagon-pitches-austerity-plan-to.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Captain Jarred Fishman, USAFR)0